No one can look at a picture like this and not feel that there has to be something more....something way out beyond everything our minds could even imagine. This past month had some things happen within it that made me actually stop and wonder for a split second or two, what the purpose of it all really was.Every one of our members here are looked upon as "Family", and this past month has tested everyone's belief that in life, everything happens for a reason.
There were a couple relapses within our members, and a very dear friend of mine was very, very ill. Three members lost their jobs, and one lost a courageous battle with cancer. Then, about 2 weeks ago, one of our family members here lost his wife who was killed by a drunk driver. An amazing lady and a well known cyclist, she was riding her bicycle, training with a friend for her next race. It happened here in my state of Wisconsin, and her story touched thousands of lives: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=771196
Then, just as I was going to begin this edition of "What's Happening?", we got word from another one of our family members here that his cousin, who was 22 and stationed in Afganistan, was killed. His "Welcome Home" party that would have been with his family, his wife of 2 months and all of his dear friends turned into another type of gathering.
So what are we to do when terrible things such as these occur in our lives ??......things that, before we began our recovery, would have had us grabbing for something that we would have thought would help mask the pain? Things that, to us, validated 'why' we were using.
I'll tell you what we do. We look around at all the beauty and love we now have in our lives where all of the ugly and hate once was. We close our eyes and remember how proud our families were when we told them we had decided to stop killing ourselves. And how, for once in our lives, we were proud of.......
The Guy in the Glass
When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.
For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life,
Is the guy staring back from the glass.
He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end,
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum,
And think you're a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the guy in the glass.
The U.S. government for the first time has quantified the loss of life resulting from a spike in fentanyl use in recent years, stating that 1,013 people died of fentanyl overdoses from April 2005 through March 2007, the Associated Press reported July 24.
Use of an illegal version of the painkilling drug appears to have subsided greatly in the past couple of years, with authorities crediting the May 2006 shutdown of a major fentanyl-making operation in Toluca, Mexico for stemming the outbreak.
Authorities first began to notice an increase in fentanyl overdoses in Chicago in 2005, and by the following year intensified activity was seen in other metropolitan communities across the country as well. Illegally made versions of the drug are sold in powder form and often are mixed with cocaine or heroin, sometimes unbeknownst to users. The narcotic is considered 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin.
Researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used information such as drugs found at the scene of an overdose to distinguish between deaths from illegally manufactured fentanyl and deaths from misuse of the pharmaceutical product, which are generally indistinguishable in autopsies. Researchers said the overall numbers in the report likely understate the overall problem because they are derived from data from only two states (New Jersey and Delaware) and four cities (Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and St. Louis).
Like Alcoholics Anonymous, treatment professionals claim success in the face of contradicting evidence. AA groupers boast "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." The truth is people rarely succeed when following the path of those in AA.
95% of the existing treatment centers in the United States adhere to the 12 Step philosophies. Not surprising, the success rate of treatment is no different from the success rate of AA: 3%.
~ By Michael J Hurd~ Dr. Michael Hurd is a psychologist, psychotherapist and author of Effective Therapy (New York: Dunhill, 1997)
During a presentation before the 2007 Legislature, then-Board of Pharmacy executive director Starla Blank said prescribers, dispensers, patients, licensing boards and law enforcement could request a confidential report from the database. The report would list all scheduled prescriptions filled for a patient during a specified time period, including the prescriber and the pharmacy. Blank said the database is intended to be a source of information for practitioners and pharmacists to use in the care of patients, as well as a tool for law enforcement to help deter drug abuse and diversion. Still, she said, the prescription drug monitoring program is not intended to prevent patients from obtaining needed drugs.
Twenty-four states currently have prescription drug monitoring programs in place, while nine have enacted legislation enabling such programs. Three other states - New Jersey, Oregon and Montana - have legislation pending. According to data provided by the Idaho Board of Pharmacy, 90 percent of the people accessing the database for profile requests are prescribing physicians, 5 percent are pharmacists and 3 percent are law enforcement. The other 2 percent are split evenly between licensing boards, patients and Medicaid. If approved in Montana, the database would be housed under the state Board of Pharmacy, and anyone with prescribing authority could sign up, receive a user number and security password, and access the system to see what controlled substances have been dispensed to a patient. Pharmacists could use the database to look for any overlapping drug therapies.
“The major benefits would be for physicians and practitioners who could see what controlled substances have already been dispensed to patients,” said Ronald Klein, executive director of the Montana Board of Pharmacy. “That's an enormous aid in evaluating and treating a patient.” If a pharmacist suspects someone is doubling up on prescriptions, Klein said, they could identify and call that person's physician, instead of relying on inadequate “phone trees.” “This would essentially eliminate the problem of doctor shopping,” Klein said. “Currently, doctors merely have access to what is in their records,” he said. “They can contact other physicians or call a pharmacy, but if a patient doesn't tell them, they can't do anything but make blind phone calls.”
Steve Bullock, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, has made prescription drug abuse one of the central issues of his campaign, and recently unveiled a plan to attack the problem based primarily on information from Long and Klein. Bullock said he's most interested in joining the 35 other states that have established centralized prescription drug monitoring programs. He also proposed coordinating social resources and ramping up enforcement by making it illegal to “doctor shop,” and increasing public awareness of the dangers of and accessibility to powerful prescription narcotics. “Working together with schools, parents, law enforcement and the medical community, we can curb this unnecessary loss of life and reverse the trend before it gets any worse,” Bullock said.
By TRISTAN SCOTT of the Missoulian Reporter Tristan Scott can be reached at 523-5264 or at tscott@missoulian.com.
A settlement plan to reduce chronic overcrowding in California prisons proposes to invest in more addiction treatment programs, as well as offering community service and other alternatives to incarceration, the San Francisco Chronicle reported May 20.
The California corrections system and prisoners, advocates, law enforcement and state officials are working with appointed court referees in an attempt to craft a solution to the overcrowding situation before a federal lawsuit goes to trial. The proposed settlement calls for prison populations to decline over the next three years, according to Los Angeles attorney and former judge Elwood Lui, one of the referees. "The idea is to make use of techniques to divert prisoners," he said. The plan calls for placing parole violators in treatment programs instead of returning them to prison; having some low-risk offenders serve their time in county jail or on probation; electronic monitoring; and offering reduced sentences to inmates who complete drug treatment, vocational training and educational programs.
"It reduces the prison population by reducing crime -- putting people in programs rather than in prison," said Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Center.
"We're reviewing this as a potential compromise framework for resolving the prison overcrowding crisis and as an effective solution to protecting public safety," said Lisa Page, a spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Opioid-dependent patients are 13 times more likely to die than their age- and sex-matched peers in the general population. To examine predictors of long-term mortality, Australian researchers conducted a 10-year follow-up study of 405 heroin-dependent patients who had participated in a randomized trial comparing methadone and buprenorphine.
* Overall mortality was 8.8 deaths per 1000 person-years of follow-up (0.66 during opioid maintenance treatment and 14.3 while out of treatment).
* Each additional opioid maintenance treatment episode lasting more than 7 days decreased mortality by 28%.
* Subjects who were using more heroin at baseline had a 12% lower mortality rate overall, likely because they spent more time in opioid maintenance treatment.
Comment by Michael Levy, PhD Although some controversy over opioid maintenance therapy exists, the reality is that untreated opioid dependence has a high fatality rate. The selection of the treatment episode as greater than 7 days strongly suggests that opioid maintenance, not detoxification, reduces mortality (also known from the results of published controlled trials). Counselors working with opioid dependent patients should recommend either buprenorphine or methadone as the standard of care, particularly for those patients who cannot achieve abstinence without pharmacological treatment.
Reference: Gibson A, Degenhardt L, Mattick RP, et al. Exposure to opioid maintenance treatment reduces long-term mortality. Addiction. 2008;103(3):462-468.
Methadone, which is both abused and used to break addiction to opioid drugs, may prove to be a hero in killing cancer. Researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake reacted to the news released today by German scientists.
Methadone: As a hero, it helps abusers overcome addiction to other drugs. As a villain, it becomes a drug of addiction itself. Now, in this surprising new role against cancer, it killed resistant forms of leukemia.
"I think it's incredibly exciting anytime you find something that circumvents the resistance process," said Dr. Stephen Lessnick, with the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Lessnick says even though the German experiment was in laboratory dishes only, it's encouraging knowing the methadone killed a cancer that defies treatment.
"That's clearly the biggest problem that we have in cancer therapy, is the development of resistance. If it wasn't for the development of resistance, we would be able to cure the vast majority of patients who walk through the door," Lessnick explained.
What scientists are doing in Germany is similar to what Huntsman researchers are doing here: All are looking for new ways to attack cancer.
Lessnick says other narcotic drugs might do the same thing as methadone with less toxicity; or maybe you could come up with different mixtures of methadone compatible with current chemotherapies.
"If one can actually understand the details for exactly how methadone is doing this, one would hope you could pick apart the mechanism and use that to devise even better treatments," Lessnick said.
What's really remarkable about these so-called novel compounds like methadone is the time frame. It's shortening dramatically from where they leave laboratory benches and then move into human clinical trials.
"[We want] to get these things to patients who need these treatments now. They don't need them 20 years from now. They need them today," Lessnick said.
German researchers believe addiction would not be an unsolvable problem if methadone should become an anti-cancer therapy.
The methadone used by German researchers killed leukemia cells without any toxic effects on normal blood cells.
Resource: KSL Television & Radio, Salt Lake City UT By Ed Yeates
WELFARE CHECKS SHOULD REQUIRE DRUG TESTS
Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test, with which I have no problem.
What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping people sitting on their bottoms, doing drugs, while I work. Can you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check? ~ Bart ~
Hi everyone....it's Rozi, and I hope you all found something interesting during your visit here to our website today. Deborah and I, both being recovering substance abusers, always try to mix it up a bit so that anyone, whether they are in recovery, working as a healthcare provider or just visiting, can hopefully take something with them when they leave our site (as long as it isn't my purse..lol). I think by now, everyone who visits us knows that we are always trying to make positive changes in this world we live in, and we will be moving forward with some new projects that the entire community here will be able to get involved in. Stop back often to see "What's Happening", ok?
We wanted to try something different at the end of "What's Happening", and what we have decided is to share with all of you a writing my partner Deborah came across while she was out canvassing the internet. The person we only know by the first name of "Bart", certainly doesn't pull any punches when he lets it be known how he feels about having to take drug tests to keep his job, while other certain people aren't being made to do the same.
What we're wondering, is how many of you agree with what Bart has to say? Do you feel he is being too harsh? It's just a simple "YES" or "NO" answer, but before you answer, make sure you read the words carefully.
And from me, Rozi Fox, I want you all to know that every one of you are part of our Methadone Family here, and we are here to help you 24/7. Sending a Smile, Rozi
So, do you agree with Bart......................Or not?
“The major benefits would be for physicians and practitioners who could see what controlled substances have already been dispensed to patients,” said Ronald Klein, executive director of the Montana Board of Pharmacy. “That's an enormous aid in evaluating and treating a patient.”
A settlement plan to reduce chronic overcrowding in California prisons proposes to invest in more addiction treatment programs, as well as offering community service and other alternatives to incarceration, the San Francisco Chronicle reported May 20.
Methadone, which is both abused and used to break addiction to opioid drugs, may prove to be a hero in killing cancer. Researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake reacted to the news released today by German scientists. 
