Narconon Alcohol Treatment and Drug Treatment Centers Speak Out About Prescription Drug Abuse

Prescription drug abuse has reached epidemic proportions in America over the last decade. This has become a silent and deadly practice amongst Americans with a least forty people dying every day from prescription drug related deaths. According to statistics, almost five thousand five hundred people start to abuse prescription drugs every day. Although drug use has decreased quite a bit over the last thirty years, the fact of the matter is that more and more people are using drugs that they can obtain easily and legally.

Why isn’t Our Medicine Safe Anymore?

There are more and more people who turn to their trusted doctors every day for ailments only to walk out of the physician’s office with a prescription for a drug that is meant to hide the symptoms rather than treat the underlying cause of the person’s illness. Many of these people are receiving prescriptions for drugs that are habit forming, or worse, just down right addictive. The drug companies are more than happy than to provide drugs for every known ache and pain that a person can experience. These drugs are often not cures for these diseases. They are usually just temporary treatments. There is not a lot of money to be made in something that will handle an illness for good. It is more lucrative for drug companies to come out with long term maintenance programs for folks.

The problem with these maintenance medications, as statistics are showing, is that many of them are just not safe. People trust their doctors and their advice and when their doctors give them a prescription, they trust that the medicine that they are being prescribed is going to help them, not hurt them. And we are not just talking about allergic reactions or blatant side effects that people can have from these medicines. Some of these medications do not show their harmful effects until the person tries to stop using them. The side effects are always on the warning labels that come with the medications, but one has to be sure to be willing to read the fine print. Doctors surely do not have the time to discuss all the dangers of every medication that they prescribe to every patient that they see every single day. Plus many people get their prescriptions online. Studies indicate that prescription drug use aided by online pharmacies. If someone can barely get information out of doctors they see in person, how are they going to get information out of someone they are never going to meet?

Drug companies apparently do not really care all that much that the medications that they create all the time are killing people or ruining people’s lives. If so, wouldn’t they come out with drugs that were safer and less habit forming? No, they are making way too much money to care. Statistics show that one in every twenty people admitted to using prescription drugs for recreational purposes in 2010 in America. Those are just the ones that admitted to using them. That is twelve million people. Add that to all the people who used prescription drugs for legitimate reasons and we are talking about a lot of money that is going to the drug companies. Hey and if the drugs are addictive, that just ensures future customers for many years to come. It’s kind of like getting young kids to smoke cigarettes. As a nation we should probably know better by now. But the sources of addiction for our future generations is coming from such a seemingly benign source; our medical community.

America’s Youth and Prescription Drugs

One of the biggest victims in this whole scenario is our children. Many kids these days grow used to using prescription medications every day for learning disorders. They learn to take medication to “feel” the way they are “supposed” to. These kids feel that their medication is safe because it comes from their doctor and is usually given to them by their parents. Medication seems like such a safe thing to take. Even if one is not taking it exactly the way it is prescribed. It usually does not take kids long to find out that if they crush their ADD/ADHD medications up and snort them it will give them a high, and one that is not that unlike that of cocaine.

Many kids then feel it is safe and acceptable to take other “medicines” in addition to get a buzz. More and more kids become addicted to prescription pain killers every day. Prescription pain killers, or opiates, are one of the top four drugs that people are addicted to in America. Kids taking prescription drugs to get high has escalated to a whole new level.

Pharm Parties

Kids are getting together these days and having what are called pharm parties. Pharm parties are where kids go through the medicine cabinets in their house and collect every drug that they can find that could possible make them high. The act of collecting these medicines is called pharming. Most of the kids that are going to the pharm party go “pharming” before hand and get together and combine their findings. They put all the pills into a bowl or a bag without any labels or warnings or anything. They stir them together to make a colorful, yet potentially fatal array of mystery medications. Every participant then reaches into the bowl or bag or whatever and pulls out an assortment of medication that they then take together. They often have no idea what kind of reaction they are going to have to these medications and what kind of reactions that these pills are going to cause together. It is a very dangerous form of Russian roulette and many a person has landed themselves in the hospital or worse from going and partaking at these pharm parties.

Kids think because these medications are legal and easily obtained from their doctors office or parents medicine cabinets that they will cause them no harm. Parent often have no idea that their child may be using medications to get high. When most people think about the dangers of drugs, they think of hard illegal drugs like meth or heroin. But the fact of the matter is that prescription drugs kill more people every year than heroin or cocaine combined. Parents really need to arm themselves with information of the dangers of these drugs so that they can warn their children. It may not always seem like kids are listening to what their parents say, especially when it comes to serious matters, but the information that parents give to their children will make effect on their kids. The earlier parents can start warning their kids about the dangers of prescription and other drugs the better. The facts do not need to be altered or embellished. Unfortunately, when it comes to the dangers of drugs, the truth is scary enough. Please contact a Narconon alcohol treatment and drug treatment center today for resources and information about how to talk to your kids about drugs. You may just be saving your child’s life.