Those Troubling OD Statistics
In recent months, samples have been found with as much as 20% fentanyl content. It’s easy to see how this could increase both the total number of overdoses, and the percentage of victims who did not survive.
When You Love a Shapeshifter
The drugs or alcohol have turned someone you love into a monster. How can we turn them back?
Quite a bit, in fact, about how to deal with a drug epidemic similar to our own.
Northernmost of the Baltic states, little Estonia, pop. 1.4 million, was possibly the very first place in Europe to experience a full outbreak of fentanyl use. It began around 2002, and spawned the epidemic that has since yielded the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths on the Continent.
How it developed and how they dealt with it is instructive, even for a relatively gigantic nation such as ours. Here’s a helpful link chronicling the Estonian experience.
What initially triggered the influx of fentanyl into Estonia?
Ironically, it was disruption in the usual drug supply lines that resulted from the war in Afghanistan. Heroin was largely unavailable, and the existing demand motivated traffickers to come up with new synthetic opioids to take its place. Things escalated from there.
Unlike in the U.S., medical overprescribing of opioids wasn’t involved.
Didn’t users recognize...
Northernmost of the Baltic states, little Estonia, pop. 1.4 million, was possibly the very first place in Europe to experience a full outbreak of fentanyl use. It began around 2002, and spawned the epidemic that has since yielded the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths on the Continent.
How it developed and how they dealt with it is instructive, even for a relatively gigantic nation such as ours. Here’s a helpful link chronicling the Estonian experience.
What initially triggered the influx of fentanyl into Estonia?
Ironically, it was disruption in the usual drug supply lines that resulted from the war in Afghanistan. Heroin was largely unavailable, and the existing demand motivated traffickers to come up with new synthetic opioids to take its place. Things escalated from there.
Unlike in the U.S., medical overprescribing of opioids wasn’t involved.
Didn’t users recognize...
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Big Pot Meets Big Labor
This might be a good opportunity for a closer look at exactly how wealthy and established the industry has become
Those Troubling OD Statistics
In recent months, samples have been found with as much as 20% fentanyl content. It’s easy to see how this could increase both the total number of overdoses, and the percentage of victims who did not survive.
Kid-Friendly Pot
I couldn’t find any evidence of consequences suffered by the pot peddlers, so can only assume there weren’t many. And it does look as if they’re still making the same products in the same packages.
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What We Can Learn from Estonia
...the situation has improved, mostly because of renewed efforts on the demand side. Estonia adopted harm reduction strategies used effectively in other countries, such as take-home naloxone; ready access to MAT; and efforts to destigmatize drug use and drug users.
Addicted to Exercise?
Like addicts deprived of their drug of choice, the compulsive exerciser may report a deep sense of loss, accompanied by symptoms such as sleeplessness, irritability, depression, anxiety.
Split Over Kratom
...both the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security have “strong ties to a kratom lobbyist (and convicted criminal) behind a notorious kratom drinks company.”
What We Can Learn from Estonia
...the situation has improved, mostly because of renewed efforts on the demand side. Estonia adopted harm reduction strategies used effectively in other countries, such as take-home naloxone; ready access to MAT; and efforts to destigmatize drug use and drug users.
The Storytellers
One young man explained that he avoided speaker meetings because the “drunkalogues” he heard triggered in him an awful craving for a drink.
Doubts about Diagnosis
It’s vulnerable to bias, both on the part of the patient and the practitioner.
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Rage-baited
From a counseling standpoint, it’s a time when we ought to be advising patients to restrict their social media activity, at the very least to selected forums and sites that support recovery goals
Rage-baited
From a counseling standpoint, it’s a time when we ought to be advising patients to restrict their social media activity, at the very least to selected forums and sites that support recovery goals
Parenting Under The Influence
Children raised in such families are more likely to be exposed to violence, to initiate their own substance use at an earlier age, and to have mental health problems in childhood.
Is This Recovery?
...there are other folks out there like these— pretending to sobriety yet still secretly using, and hoping to avoid the sort of trouble that haunted them in the past.
Officers in the House
...with law enforcement agencies taking on vastly different roles, planning and practicing our response appears more important than in the past.
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A Novel Approach
...the author, who grew up in and around the region, chose to use its earnings to found Higher Ground, a home for recovering women.
A Novel Approach
...the author, who grew up in and around the region, chose to use its earnings to found Higher Ground, a home for recovering women.
Diagnosing Cannabis Use Disorder: Updated
It certainly makes sense that if you suffer from a major mental illness, you should stay away from pot.
Video: Practical Advice on Prescription Painkiller Problems
People have abused opiates for 5,000 years. As much as medicine depends on them, they've always created problems for a percentage of users.
