As the patent on MS Contin, a morphine pill for cancer patients, moved toward expiration in the late 1980s, its maker, Purdue Pharma, began development on OxyContin. Fast forward a few years and $35 billion later and the opioid medication topped the charts as the country’s number one selling painkiller. The company had a problem, […]
Probuphine Implants in the upper arm that release buprenorphine, a drug that counteracts opioid withdrawals and cravings, have proven effective in treating addiction to heroin and prescription painkillers. Probuphine is steadily making its way through clinical trials, as well as the approval process of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Advocates of the drug […]
Amid the always-raucous debate about illegal drug policy in the United States, most everyone agrees on at least one thing: our nation’s war on drugs, which began in the 1960s, is a failure. Overdose deaths are at all time highs. Millions of non-violent drug offenders fill the prisons and, yet, there is still no shortage […]
Tragedies due to the widespread abuse of heroin and opioid painkillers have sadly become commonplace in the United States. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey published in April reports that one in five Americans say they have a family member who has been addicted to prescription painkillers. As if these stats were not bleak enough, another […]
In America, you know something has gone mainstream when it becomes the subject of a sketch on the iconic late night show Saturday Night Live (SNL). For decades, SNL has skewered popular American institutions, politicians and societal issues, which have alternately alienated some people and entertained others. In April of this year, SNL aired a […]
Some of the biggest myths about addiction have been produced by the war on drugs propaganda, while others come from a misinformed minority of people who have no medical training or firsthand experience with addiction. Whichever is the case, misinformation surrounding addiction does more harm than good by fueling the stigma surrounding addiction and can […]
As adults, it’s easy to forget the emotional and psychological turmoil that teenagers experience. The teen years are filled with insecurity, anxiety and a sense of pressure to conform to the social expectations of their peers. This is one reason why many teens experiment with drugs like Xanax bars, to either “fit in” or dull […]
One of the most difficult burdens a person coping with addiction faces is the guilt and shame felt from hurting those they love the most. The emotional sting is particularly heartbreaking though, when a baby is born addicted to drugs and immediately begins the painful process of withdrawal. Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) is a condition […]
The epidemic of fatal overdoses linked to prescription opioid painkillers has healthcare officials and drug makers scrambling to find a solution. In 2014 alone, 47,055 people died from accidental overdoses. The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in more than half of those fatalities, 60 percent in fact, opioid painkillers were involved. […]
Frustrated with big pharmaceutical companies ability to block or slow down federal initiatives regarding opioid painkillers, several states are considering their own regulations. States, like Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, have compelling reasons for wanting to pass these regulations. Rates of fatal drug overdoses have been on the rise for years, in large part, due to […]
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