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Silent Epidemic: Older Americans With Addiction Forsaken As Opioid Crisis Grips Nation
The many ramifications of the opioid epidemic on older adults range from a lack of beds in treatment facilities to a generational reluctance to seek help.
Stateline: Older Addicts Squeezed by Opioid Epidemic
As the nation’s opioid addiction epidemic expands, older adults in Maine and other states face mounting barriers to getting help for abuse of alcohol and opioid painkillers — not the least of which is finding they are squeezed out of scarce treatment facilities by younger people with prescription drug or heroin habits. (Vestal, 7/26)
“When Clifton Hilton decided to quit drinking this month, he called a residential drug and alcohol detoxification center in this coastal Maine city on a Friday afternoon and was told a bed was available for him. But by the time he arrived on a bus from Bangor the next morning, the bed had been taken.” Continue Reading
National Recovery Month (Recovery Month) is a national observance that educates Americans on the fact that addiction treatment and mental health services can enable those with a mental and/or substance use disorder to live a healthy and rewarding life. The observance’s main focus is to laud the gains made by those in recovery from these conditions, just as we would those who are managing other health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. Recovery Month spreads the positive message that behavioral health is essential to overall health, prevention works, treatment is effective, and people can and do recover.
Recovery Month, now in its 27th year, highlights individuals who have reclaimed their lives and are living happy and healthy lives in long-term recovery and also honors the prevention, treatment, and recovery service providers who make recovery possible. Recovery Month promotes the message that recovery in all its forms is possible, and also encourages citizens to take action to help expand and improve the availability of effective prevention, treatment, and recovery services for those in need.
Each September, thousands of prevention, treatment, and recovery programs and services around the country celebrate their successes and share them with their neighbors, friends, and colleagues in an effort to educate the public about recovery, how it works, for whom, and why. There are millions of Americans whose lives have been transformed through recovery. These successes often go unnoticed by the broader population; therefore, Recovery Month provides a vehicle to celebrate these accomplishments.
The Recovery Month theme is carefully developed each year to invite individuals in recovery and their support systems to spread the message and share the successes of recovery. The theme for Recovery Month 2016 is Join the Voices for Recovery: Our Families, Our Stories, Our Recovery!, which highlights the value of family support throughout recovery. The theme also invites individuals in recovery and their family members to share their personal stories and successes in order to encourage others. Learn more about this year’s theme.
The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) establishes a comprehensive, coordinated, balanced strategy through enhanced grant programs that would expand prevention and education efforts while also promoting treatment and recovery.
S.524/H.R.953. The bill passed the U.S. Senate on March 10, 2016, by a vote of 94-1.
Statement by the President on the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 Read it Here
Brief Summary of Provisions of CARA
Expand prevention and educational efforts—particularly aimed at teens, parents and other caretakers, and aging populations—to prevent the abuse of methamphetamines, opioids and heroin, and to promote treatment and recovery.
Expand the availability of naloxone to law enforcement agencies and other first responders to help in the reversal of overdoses to save lives.
Expand resources to identify and treat incarcerated individuals suffering from addiction disorders promptly by collaborating with criminal justice stakeholders and by providing evidence-based treatment.
Expand disposal sites for unwanted prescription medications to keep them out of the hands of our children and adolescents.
Launch an evidence-based opioid and heroin treatment and intervention program to expand best practices throughout the country.
Launch a medication assisted treatment and intervention demonstration program.
Strengthen prescription drug monitoring programs to help states monitor and track prescription drug diversion and to help at-risk individuals access services.
Socioeconomic Status, Cognitive Tests May Predict Who Experiments With Underage Drinking
Experts have enumerated the risks of underage drinking for years, finding that it increases the risk of sexual assault, impaired judgement, and even serious injuries that can lead to death. Despite all this, young people still drink a lot — about 5.4 million people between the ages of 12 and 20 in the United States report binge drinking each year. In an effort to prevent these behaviors, a team of researchers has discovered that certain demographic factors, brain features, and cognitive functions are present in children who grow up to drink lots of alcohol.
“We were able to predict, with 74 percent accuracy, which 12-to 14-year old youth eventually went on to engage in alcohol use by late adolescence,” said Lindsay Squeglia, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, in a press release.
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Fact Sheets – Alcohol Use and Your Health
Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years.
Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong
What really causes addiction — to everything from cocaine to smart-phones? And how can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand, as he has watched loved ones struggle to manage their addictions. He started to wonder why we treat addicts the way we do — and if there might be a better way. As he shares in this deeply personal talk, his questions took him around the world, and unearthed some surprising and hopeful ways of thinking about an age-old problem.
Johann Hari spent three years researching the war on drugs; along the way, he discovered that addiction is not what we think it is. Full bio
More sober living programs popping up on campuses
“It was a safe space with people who were trying to do what I was trying to do,” said Ryan, 25, who asked to be identified only by his first name to protect his privacy. “No one was talking about going out and getting drunk. It was the antithesis of my previous dorm experiences, where the shackles are off and people go crazy.”
The nation’s opioid epidemic is focusing new attention on a strategy Rutgers pioneered in 1988. Last year, Gov. Chris Christie signed a law that requires every state-run college and university in New Jersey to offer sober housing if at least a quarter of its students live on campus. The law gives schools four years to comply, but the College of New Jersey was already preparing to open a sober dorm, which it did last fall. Elsewhere, Texas Tech opened substance-free housing in 2011. Oregon State University will offer such accommodations this coming school year.
Sober dorms are a “major new development in the recovery movement. They’re unique because they get to the heart of the beast,” said Robert DuPont, a psychiatrist who specializes in drug abuse. DuPont, who heads the Institute for Behavior and Health, a drug policy think tank based in Rockville, Md., served as the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse from 1973 to 1978.
During a year in which Kevin was struggling with addiction, he spent about $4,000 on alcohol and drugs, including Oxycontin pills – a single one cost him $25 on the street.
“Hey Kev, listen – you ever try an Oxycontin pill before?” Kevin said his friend asked. “Listen, you can take it, and just don’t do it again. You know, it’s a great experience – it’s a great kind of high and everything, and you don’t have to take it again.”
“I promise.”
After about four months passed, Oxy became too expensive for Kevin – so he began snorting heroin for three months. It wasn’t until he was about to use the drug through an IV that he said he realized he needed to get some help.
Kevin, who asked not to include his last name in this story because of the societal stigma that surrounds those struggling with addiction and in recovery, is now a 21-year-old undeclared freshman. He took some time off from school during his first year to recover. Now, he’s doing well in school and about one year and five months clean.
Kevin wasn’t alone. There were about 23.5 million Americans addicted to drugs and alcohol in 2010, according to the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. Drug use is highest between those 18 to 20 – 23.9 percent used an illicit drug in a month-long span in 2012, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported last year.
The Betty Ford Center Children’s Program Reminds Parents That Summer Is the Time Teens and Young Adults Are Most Likely to Try Drugs and Alcohol for the First Time
CENTER CITY, MN–(Marketwired – July 19, 2016) – The unlimited freedom that summer provides for many preteens and young adults sometimes leads to first-time use of alcohol or drugs, which can open the door to the addiction trap and traumatize families, particularly younger siblings. Two recent studies by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Teen Study, Young Adult Study) indicate that June and July are when experimentation with these dangerous substances peaks.
“What is disturbing is that on an average June or July day, more than 11,000 adolescents use alcohol for the first time,” says Jerry Moe, National Director of the Children’s Program, part of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. “This can have lasting negative effects on younger kids who see their older siblings engaging in this behavior.”
Moe has closely observed the effects that addiction has on younger brothers and sisters. These range from feeling forgotten by the family to being bullied by siblings trapped by addiction. Many kids who have completed the Children’s Program report that older siblings sometimes: