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Rx Addict Action
Defining moments in Rx addiction
April 2014
In This Issue
Ads for Death
The FDA does one thing right
The Blogosphere
Fed Up and the Zohydro battle
Brandon Update
Ads for Death

Have you been around long enough to remember cigarette ads on TV?

 

If you are, then you probably remember the reason why you don't see them any more. Someone figured out that advertising works. Smoking kills Americans every day.

Someone figured out that advertising a harmful substance is not in the public's best interest.

Yet pharmaceutical companies spent $4.8 billion back in 2009, and the number of ads has gone up since then. The death toll from overdoses of prescription painkillers has more than tripled in the past decade. 

The presence of the ads is bad enough, but according to at least one study, 6 out of 10 claims they make are false!

 

Read more, here, on my blog.

Naloxone Approval!

 

Well, the FDA did something right for once. They approved Naloxone by prescription. 

 
As an opioid-reversal drug, Naloxone has the potential to save lives. 

 

I interviewed two experts on Naloxone on  Afflicted by Addiction: Sharon Stancliff, M.D. & Whitney Englander .

 

And read more about Naloxone in this blog post.

The Blogosphere 

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Be responsible about your pain management. 
Lock up your meds! 
RXDrugSafe
Don't let the neighborhood get their illegal prescription drugs from you unwittingly.  
If you have a house cleaner, a baby sitter, a teenager, dinner parties, anyone at all in your house and you take prescription meds, lock them up! 

RxDrugAddict.com friends get a special deal with RxDrugSafe. Check it out on my website! 


Sadly, every day the newspaper carries stories that are either directly or indirectly about prescription drug abuse.

Reading (here, in the Sac Bee) about the twin brothers arrested after the vehicular murder of a man and his daughter, we see they had fallen from "the best kids anyone could ever have," to boys with petty crime records who would lead police on a high speed chase, after they were prescribed and "developed a reliance on prescription painkillers." 

Reading (here, in the Washington Post) about the northern Sierra Madre of Mexico's storied "Golden Triangle" of notorious gangsters and marijuana harvests, we see they are no longer planting that crop, turning instead to large-scale opium poppy production to feed the US growing heroin habit. According to The Washington Post, Mexican traffickers' "shrewd marketing strategy," is to target areas where "prescription pill abuse is the worst."

And at the same moment rx drug abuse is entering every section of our daily newspapers, our government watchdogs, the FDA, has become Big Pharma's lapdog, and is approving stronger and more addictive forms of opioid painkillers!  

We must do all we can to bring attention to this travesty, this sad, sad, preventable epidemic that has insidiously entered every aspect of our lives. 

You and I are at the front lines and our voices can make a difference. Please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues, and let's say Enough Already! 

 

Bradley V. DeHaven

brad@rxdrugaddict.com 

Fed Up  

Zohydro battle continues

  

I'm on the steering committee of Fed Up, a coalition of medical professionals and addiction specialists working to end the opioid addiction epidemic. Incensed that the US FDA approved Zohydro ER, a high-dose, single-entity hydrocodone formulation, this group wrote a letter to the FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg.  By approving this drug, the FDA has put pharmaceutical industry interests ahead of public health. 

 

Read more here on my blog. 

Brandon Update 
portrait of Brandon

 

Most parents who are dealing with the depths of their child's addiction have lowered the once lofty expectations for their child. Whereas once you may have envisioned your child running a corporation, becoming a doctor or an athlete, when addiction strikes all a parent hopes for is a healthy person free of addiction who can look you in the eyes and smile at you or tell you they love you. 
 
It seems simple when I tell people that my son is approaching 4 years clean, has had the same job as a waiter for over 3 years and takes great joy in taking his mom out for a one on one lunch and insisting on picking up the tab.  I assure you that those of us who have been afflicted by addiction see these simple things as a pipe dream and a miracle. 
 
Brandon is our miracle, once so deeply addicted that all we could foresee for his future was a slide show of baby pictures played at his funeral. We know how blessed we are to wrap our arms around his healthy body, to hear him barrel laugh as he tells us a story, or even to be a shoulder to cry on when he feels the hardship of everyday life or the twists and turns of a relationship with a young lady.  Brandon once told me the hardest part about being clean was "feeling" since the drugs had masked simple emotions for so long. Love your child. If you have a child struggling, don't ever give up, because where there is life there is hope. Help them understand that feeling great doesn't come without feeling bad sometimes. 
 
At 22 Brandon was what many would say was a lost cause.  He stood 6'2" and weighed a mere 127 pounds. On May 17, Brandon will turn 29 years old. He now weighs 210 pounds and could grace the pages of any magazine. His heart is filled with love and joy and so are we.
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