Category Archives: Drug Dependency

A disgraced, drug-addicted anaesthetist who infected 55 patients with hepatitis C did not realise his contaminated needles were being used on patients, a court has heard. James Latham Peters, 63, has pleaded guilty to 55 counts of negligently causing serious injury to the women patients by infecting them with the potentially deadly blood disease while they underwent pregnancy terminations at the Croydon Day Surgery between June 2008 and November 2009. His defence barrister John Dickinson, SC, told a pre-sentence plea hearing in Victoria's Supreme Court on Tuesday that after injecting himself in private with the opioid he was addicted to, fentanyl, Peters failed to realise the same syringe which contained "blowback", or his contaminated blood, was then used on the patients. "At no stage of what he did did he intend to use the same syringe, but he did," Mr Dickinson said. Advertisement He said Peters became exposed to drugs after he married his second wife in 1991. By the mid-90s he was "hopelessly addicted". Despite being suspended by the now defunct medical board of Victoria at his own request in 1996, Mr Dickinson described it as "mind-boggling" that an addict would then be allowed to go back to work … Continue reading →

Malta should stop criminalising persons who make use of drugs for personal use, Alternattiva Demokratika said. The Green Party pointed out that Malta should follow the successful model of countries such as Portugal which decriminalised drugs for personal use. AD Chairperson Michael Briguglio said: "Education remains a key tool for policies on drugs. People should be conscious of their various effects and, if they seek help, they should receive it. But criminalising people for making use of drugs has been a failure not only in terms of policy but, even more so, with respect to those whose criminalisation has resulted in a spiral of hardships". He added that "Personal use of drugs should be decriminalised. The victims of drug addiction and dependency are to be considered as persons in need of help and not as criminals." At the same time, Briguglio noted that decriminalisation would ensure that recreational drug users, including those who cultivate soft drugs for personal use, are not criminalised for their lifestyle. AD spokesperson for Citizenship Robert Callus said: "With the emphasis being on punishment rather than prevention, treatment and harm reduction, the war on drugs is proving to be a miserable failure." He added that a … Continue reading →

Public release date: 12-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Rhiannon Bugno Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu 214-648-0880 Elsevier Philadelphia, PA, February 12, 2013 Scopolamine is an anticholinergic drug with many uses. For example, it prevents nausea, vomiting, and motion sickness. However, scopolamine is re-emerging as an antidepressant, with recent studies showing that scopolamine can rapidly improve mood in depressed patients. In addition, in a new study published in Biological Psychiatry this month by Dr. Moriel Zelikowsky and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, it may also be a possible treatment for anxiety disorders. Exposure therapy, where the key goal is the elimination of fear through repeated 'safe' exposure to the threat, is commonly employed for the treatment of anxiety disorders. However, its effectiveness is diminished because humans and animals alike tend to be very sensitive to context, causing extinction learning to be dependent on the environment in which it occurs. This makes memories formed during extinction unstable. As a result, extinguished fears commonly return when people put themselves in new situations. "Current research aimed at treating this problem either employs invasive, untranslatable methods or attempts to strengthen extinction learning rather than prevent relapse," explained senior author Dr. Michael Fanselow. In … Continue reading →

WASHINGTON After Jennifer Vanlieu turned to methadone treatment to beat an addiction to heroin and pain pills, she morphed from drug-user to convicted drug-dealer. Vanlieu said she got a carryout methadone dose at a clinic operated by CRC Health Corp. in Richmond, Ind., in March, 2010, and then gave about 15 milligrams to her friend Carissa Plemons. Plemons died hours later, after ingesting a lethal mix of methadone and other drugs, according to police reports. Take-home methadone - doses patients carry out instead of taking at clinics - enabled the abuse, said Vanlieu, 26, who was sentenced to six years in prison for dealing the drug to Plemons. While she didn't sell it to her friend, she said in an interview that other clinic patients often re-sold their take- homes. CRC is owned by Boston-based Bain Capital Partners and is the largest U.S. provider of methadone treatment. "Some would sell it in the parking lot," she said. Liquid methadone, used for decades to help addicts abate withdrawal symptoms as they quit heroin or other opiates, is leaking into illegal street sales via take-home doses, according to law-enforcement officials in Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Investigators in each of those … Continue reading →

Morphine Addiction is a powerful thing and will lead addicts to do things they would not normally do to find their next hit of the drug. Into Action Treatment founder, Andrey Rossin, gives an addiction perspective on why someone would go this far to feed their morphine addiction. Miami, FL (PRWEB) February 11, 2013 DNA evidence led to his eventual arrest. Its a sad fact that many addicts will turn to crime to get money to support their habit. At the same time, they are probably buying morphine which was stolen from a hospital, pharmacy or ambulance service, said Andrey Rossin, founder and CEO of IntoActionTreatment.com , a Boynton Beach, FL, treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction. Its a terribly vicious circle of crime and one which can only be broken by breaking the addiction. Morphine ranks in the top among prescription drug addictions and its also a common drug which addicts obtain illegally. Derived from the poppy plant, morphine is commonly used in hospitals and ambulances as an emergency pain reliever. Its used in the hospital as well for after surgery pain relief. It is also easy for someone to become physically dependent on morphine, Mr. Rossin said. … Continue reading →

Lackawanna County Coroner Tim Rowland gauges the area's prescription drug abuse problem by how often he has to ask a family to identify the body of someone who overdosed. As deputy coroner in 2003, Mr. Rowland recalls meeting families about once every three weeks. Now it's closer to once a week. Lackawanna County had 48 deaths related to prescription medicine abuse in 2012. Since 2008, the county has had an average of 41 such deaths per year. From Jan. 1 to Friday , Mr. Rowland said there have been three deaths in the county that can be linked to prescription drug overdoses, and one that was an overdose on heroin and prescription drugs. He is waiting for toxicology tests before declaring another five deaths in that time frame were caused by prescription drug overdoses. Nationally, drug overdose death rates have more than tripled since 1990 and have never been higher, federal data show. Throughout the United States, 100 people die from drug overdoses each day. In 2008, more than 36,000 people died from drug overdoses, most resulting from prescription drugs. David Withers, M.D., associate medical director at Marworth, an alcohol and chemical dependency treatment facility in Waverly, said he believes … Continue reading →

Guns n Roses - Megamix - Paradise City-Welcome To The Jungle-Sweet Child O' Mine (DMC Remix) This track is a remix by Sanny X for DMC Records of the following by Guns n' Roses: Paradise City - Welcome To The Jungle - Sweet Child O' Mine 1986 Geffen Records "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use." At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop-metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock roll crashing back into the charts. They were not nice boys; nice boys don't play rock roll. They were ugly, misogynistic, and violent; they were also funny, vulnerable, and occasionally sensitive, as their breakthrough hit, "Sweet Child O' Mine," showed. While Slash and Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out dueling guitar riffs worthy of Aerosmith or the Stones, Axl Rose screeched out his tales of sex, drugs, and apathy in the big … Continue reading →

Child Poverty In UK'The Bigger Picture' As many as 2.3 million children are not being included in official poverty statistics despite living "materially deprived" lives, according to a new report. Households are currently deemed to be living below the poverty line if the money coming in is less than 60% of the average income. But the think tank Policy Exchange says that definition is too narrow and that social deprivation should also be considered. "It doesn't matter if you are just above the line or below the line," said the head of economics and social policy at the organisation, Matthew Oakley . "If you have poor education, poor housing, you're struggling with family life, there's debt in the household, we should be trying to help these families... Just focusing on income clearly isn't enough." Ruth Woodgate lives with her two daughters in the Nelson ward of Great Yarmouth, where nearly half of all children suffer poverty. With 209 coming in each week, they are living way below the poverty line. All too often she relies on her bowl of coppers to find enough money for a loaf of bread. "I find I'm constantly … Continue reading →

After Jennifer Vanlieu turned to methadone treatment to beat an addiction to heroin and pain pills, she morphed from drug-user to convicted drug-dealer. Vanlieu said she got a carryout methadone dose at a clinic operated by CRC Health Corp. in Richmond, Indiana, in March, 2010, and then gave about 15 milligrams to her friend Carissa Plemons. Plemons died hours later, after ingesting a lethal mix of methadone and other drugs, according to police reports. Take-home methadone -- doses patients carry out instead of taking at clinics -- enabled the abuse, said Vanlieu, 26, who was sentenced to six years in prison for dealing the drug to Plemons. While she didnt sell it to her friend, she said in an interview that other clinic patients often re-sold their take- homes. CRC is owned by Boston-based Bain Capital Partners LLC and is the largest U.S. provider of methadone treatment. Some would sell it in the parking lot, she said. Liquid methadone, used for decades to help addicts abate withdrawal symptoms as they quit heroin or other opiates, is leaking into illegal street sales via take-home doses, according to law-enforcement officials in Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Investigators in each of those … Continue reading →

He points out that Britain is at the top of the European league tables for reoffending rates even though it is spending more on crime and justice than ever before. "Elsewhere in Europe, the prison population has followed crime rates down. Yet back here in Blighty we are ramming our prisons full, spending a fortune in the process and doing very little to turn criminals lives around In sum, we are spending far more to achieve less and less. That is lunacy and anathema to any Conservative. Mr Gummer also said the Right should object to the fact that prisons cause a "waste of life". "For many criminals, prison is just another welfare dependency, and we might challenge its over-use on those grounds alone," he added. "The failure to tackle mental health, profound psychological disorder, drug and alcohol addiction and moral vacuity, is in itself a crime on societys part. We put people behind walls and then forget about them. That is wrong. The MP said Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, is making progress but more reform of Britain's "failing" prison system is needed. Mr Grayling said he wanted to be a "tough" Justice Secretary when he took over the … Continue reading →