Texas Addiction Recovery Blog
The Link Between Opiate Overdoses and Organ Donation
The opioid/opiate epidemic is creating a ripple effect that touches many aspects of life. One of its most surprising effects might be its effect on severely sick individuals. Opioids (also known as opiates) are drugs that can relieve pain and include prescription...
Drug Company Controversies
On Friday, August 4, 2017, another interesting development relating to drugs occurred. On that day, a federal court in New York found fund manager Martin Shkreli guilty of three counts of fraud. He could spend up to twenty years for this conviction. According to the...
What If Opioid Drug Addiction Isn’t Due to Chronic Pain Prescriptions?
Pain (Pixabay) Opioid abuse is epidemic, but what is the cause? Is it that the pharmaceutical companies oversold how nonaddictive they were, and people legitimately seeking pain relief accidentally became addicted? Or were they abused by recreational users trying to...
New War on Drugs Won’t Solve Substance Use Disorder Treatment Crisis
Anti-drug poster from the Office of National Drug Control Policy circa 2000. (Wikimedia commons) The War on Drugs may be about to heat up again. Despite last year’s US Surgeon General’s report and the predominant finding by doctors and addiction specialists in general...
The Dangers of Illegal Fentanyl
Yesterday, we talked about the dangers of unregulated, illegally produced alcohol. That’s not the only dangerous substance out there. Did you know that illegal substances might be even more dangerous than you think? For example, fentanyl is a drug that seems to be...
Fake Alcohol, Real Problems
If alcohol and drug abuse wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that other things and activities can also be dangerous. At least that’s what some travelers allegedly discovered on recent vacations. The travelers apparently ingested illegally produced alcohol while visiting...
Campus Help for Alcohol and Drug Abuse
As difficult as alcohol and drug abuse are, they’re not hopeless conditions. There’s often hope all around if you know where to look for it. For example, if you’re a student at a college or a university, you probably have a health services facility available on your...
Watch Out for Opioid Substance Use Disorder Treatment Scams
The opioid prescription pill epidemic may not have reached its peak yet, but concern about scams by unscrupulous rehab operators could hurt efforts to expand the number of addicts in treatment. Most notoriously Kenneth Chatman, a two-bit swindler already convicted on...
Fighting (Sweet) Fire with Fire
"Sweet fire calling " 'You can't deny me ...' ” – Joni Mitchell, Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire What’s the best treatment for drug addiction? The one that works. Unfortunately there is still a belief among too much of the population that the way to stop abusing drugs...
Do Young People Celebrate Alcohol Abuse?
Many people think that being young and abusing alcohol go hand-in-hand. After all, we’ve all seen the movies and television shows about the wild keg parties people throw when their parents go out of town or the crazy fraternity parties that feature a good amount of...