prescription drug abuse
Should Fentanyl Testing Kits Be Allowed at Music Festivals?
Drug use has long been part of music festival culture. Despite attempts to regulate it, it’s incredibly difficult to stop drugs from…
Fatal Drug Overdoses Decline for the First Time in 30 Years
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC reports that there were around 68,557 drug overdose fatalities in the United States in…
Managing the Outcome of Florida’s Pill Mills
Anyone familiar with the current opioid crisis in the United States has heard of the impact that Florida’s “pill mills” have had…
A May Day Message for Workers Struggling with Alcohol and Drug Abuse
The May Day holiday has taken different forms and has been associated with many different events throughout history, one of the most…
Re-Examining Suboxone: Benefits and Risks of Buprenorphine
Buprenorphine has been in the news more than usual as of late. On one side of the spectrum, we’ve learned that the…
Sackler Family and Purdue Pharma Face Lawsuits Over Role in Opioid Crisis
In 2017, opioids killed over 47,600 Americans, a large portion of whom died from legally regulated prescription painkillers. For a long time,…
Addiction in Families: The Lesser-Discussed Casualties of Drug and Alcohol Abuse
Addiction in families is becoming an increasingly common reality. Last year over 72,000 Americans succumbed to fatal drug overdose. Countless others escaped…
Make It Count: What Happens after Narcan Deployment?
Narcan saves lives and that’s really all there is too it…or is it? It’s true that the widely used anti-overdose drug has…
Northern Kentucky Officials Taking Addiction Prevention into their Own Hands
Every so often, we’re reminded of the power of communities to mobilize and improve conditions for their citizens and outlying neighborhoods. Whether…
The Long-Term Impact of Florida’s Pill Mills
A few years ago, it seemed like Floridians couldn’t look in any direction without spotting a pill mill. These fly-by-night “pain management clinics” where addicts could get pills from doctors looking to cash in on vulnerable drug users’ desperation were operating in full view of law enforcement, legislators and prevention advocates. They were in storefronts, in physicians’ offices and practically everywhere else across the sunshine state. In 2010, Florida led the nation in diverted prescription drugs, resulting in seven Floridians dying every day along with countless others throughout the nation. The state had also become the destination for distributors and abusers through the proliferation of pill mills….
Addiction to Exercise or Body Building
Eating disorders are a form of addiction that cause people to look dangerously thin or overweight. Less known is the addiction to maintaining a toned physique that suggests a career in bodybuilding or fitness modeling, which can sometimes be powered by the use of dangerous steroid drugs or unhealthy frequency of working out. If the idea of an addiction to exercise is foreign to you, I will unpack what this could look like briefly. If you attend a gym regularly, you see the men and women who very obviously spend a lot of time toning their bodies, which could even be you. Fitness is a very healthy habit that many people partake in daily. But, there are times that an unhealthy addiction can form in seek of acceptance, success in competition or feeding of a body image disorder (similar to that of eating disorders). This addiction, although rooted in a healthy habit, can be extremely dangerous to a person’s body. Despite the risk, someone with a body image addiction may look in the mirror and see a scrawny person when you see what looks like an Olympic body builder. Or, maybe, someone looks in the mirror and see an overweight individual, besides the fact that they are dangerously thin. In order to fix the ‘problem’ they will spend hours in the gym breaking down their bodies and pushing themselves past a healthy limit….