- Thu, 15 Nov 2001, ONE IN 50 A HEROIN ADDICT (shouldn't this scare someone in Scotland?).
- Tue, 1 May 2001. THE HEALING POWERS OF PUFFER FISH Vancouver Company Hopes Infamous Toxin Can Help Heroin Addicts, Cancer Patients
- Thu, 15 Mar 2001, US MD: New Hope For Heroin Addicts What makes the treatment center different is its physician director Dr. Richard W. Carpenter, who dishes out a promising new heroin rehabilitation drug, buprenorphine
- Fri, 9 Mar 2001, US WI: Middle Schoolers In Gun Scare Had Heroin, Police Say
- Thu, 8 Mar 2001, US VA: Rural Doctor Leads Attempt To Recall Oxycontin Convinced that the harms of OxyContin outweigh the benefits, Van Zee is helping to organize a national petition drive to have the drug recalled.
- Feb 2001 US ME: Expert: Hard-core Drug Abuse Rampant The average age of a heroin or OxyContin addict today is 21, O'Brien said. An estimated 1,800 addicts live in Portland alone, using 2 million bags of heroin a year to maintain themselves. "Bangor north has been devastated by heroin," he said. "Heroin use continues to rise, and this is where OxyContin use comes in."
- January 9, 2001, Heroin, an Old Nemesis, Makes an Encore- Extensive NY Times article
- Thu, 04 Jan 2001, US PA: Heroin Substitute Grows In Popularity. OxyContin, a prescription drug, has been growing in popularity among heroin addicts in the western part of the state and could be migrating
east, according to state attorney general spokesman Kevin Harley.- Wed, 29 Nov 2000, US MA: Heroin Addicts Getting Younger
- Tue, 21 Nov 2000, CN BC: Fix: Three Who OD'D Sad tales that shouldn't ever happen.
- 10/20/2000: Buprenorphine Legislation Hailed as Treatment Breakthrough. Jointogether article
- Sun, 01 Oct 2000 Switzerland: Swiss Say Yes To Doling Out Heroin, Former heroin addict Jerome Hunt of Atlanta tells Insight that safe-injection rooms involve “exploitation of freedom” and “an incentive to remain addicted.”
- Mon, 25 Sep 2000 US: Web: Heroin Boom Takes In Suburbs, Small Towns Four years ago, Kathryn Logan was 15 and a straight-A student at a suburban high school. Now, at 19, she's at a California treatment center trying to piece together a life shattered by drugs, especially heroin.
- Fri, 22 Sep 2000 CN ON: Flesh Eating Disease Kills Addict. Israeli doctors say they have found yet another reason to avoid sharing needles: It can pass on deadly flesh eating bacteria.
- Thu, 21 Sep 2000: Australia: Doubt On Heroin Clinic As Solution THE success of naltrexone in treating heroin addiction has been oversold because it worked for only a small number of users, a visiting addiction expert said yesterday.
- Thu, 21 Sep 2000: Frustrated by declining support from Western donors and the indifference of the ruling Taliban, the United Nations is winding down efforts to persuade farmers in Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium, to switch to
alternative, legal crops.- Tue, 01 Aug 2000: Australia: Lethal Heroin Batch Leaves Four Dead
- Fri, 16 Jun 2000: Australia: Grieving Dad Pleads For Injecting Rooms
- Mon, 19 Jun 2000 US MA Heroin more popular than cocaine!
- Thu, 08 Jun 2000 Ireland: Mother Speaks Of Son's Heroin Tragedy. `I mean, the success rate for someone to come off heroin and stay off it for the rest of their lives is a very low percent
- 08 Jun 2000 CN AB: Codeine Possible Lifeline For Heroin Addicts
- Sat, 03 Jun 2000 US CA: The Detox Paradox. Controversial Methadone Treatment Centers Give Heroin Addicts A Better Life While Still Dependent
- Sun, 14 May 2000, US TX: Methadone Meltdown
- Sat, 13 May 2000, US: Heroin Treatment Lags Far Behind Need To Help Users
- Tue, 09 May 2000, US NY: LTE: The Abuse of Heroin, All Around Here in Chicago, there has been an increase in fatal and near fatal asthma associated with snorting heroin. This may be a reaction to the heroin itself or to adulterants in the drug.
- Mon, 01 May 2000 US: Face of Heroin: It's Younger and Suburban "It's easy for us, as we get older, to forget how powerful peer pressure is and how needy kids are to have friends and the acceptance of their friends," Dr. Rosenthal said. "If they are pained and drugs are available, and if they fall into a peer group where drugs are the currency, it's really going to stack the deck against them
- Tue, 25 Apr 2000 US NM: Rio Arriba Drug Deaths Up In Spite Of Efforts Deaths from drug overdoses rose nearly 17 percent in Rio Arriba County last year despite a new treatment center and a government crackdown on drug dealers.
- Wed, 12 Apr 2000 Ireland: Rock Singer Warns Children On Addict's Life The jugular veins have collapsed from sticking needles in his neck, and four of the five people who started drugs the same time as him are now dead.
- Wed, 29 Mar 2000 US CA: Treatment of Heroin Users' Sores Cost S.F. Up To $40 MILLION YEARLY. The hospital handled 4,300 abscess cases in 1998-99, up from fewer than 3,000 in 1995-96. ``It is horrific, if you've ever, ever been unfortunate enough to witness the people suffering from this,''
- 3/27/00 Drug Deaths at Record High, Prices Drop 15,973 people died from drug-related causes in 1997, an increase of 1,130 people from 1996.
- Sat, 18 Mar 2000 Russia: Drug Addicts Swear By Brain Surgery Twenty-year-old Sveta, one of the first drug users to have had the operation at the end of 1998, has faith in the cure.
- Thu, 23 Mar 2000 US CT: Drug Death Shocks College In Hartford. By all accounts, Mr. Kaupp, 22, of Menham, N.J., is lucky to be alive. According to one of the three surviving roommates, the four men had begun celebrating their weeklong vacation by consuming various amounts of heroin and prescription drugs, including Xanax, an antianxiety medication; Valium; butalbital, which is prescribed for migraines, and sleeping pills
- Tue, 07 Mar 2000 US FL: As More People Shoot Up, So Do Heroin Deaths. The deaths soared despite law enforcement's most successful year yet.
- Mon, 06 Mar 2000 US NH: Today's Heroin Is More Pure, More Potent, More Dangerous. it can be purchased for six or seven dollars a dose in Massachusetts, police say. "And kicking the habit is extremely difficult. "It has a recovery rate of 5 percent," Hughes said.
- Thu, 02 Mar 2000 Australia: Hope For Heroin Addicts. Willunga GF Dr Rhys Henning has been prescribing a low-dose form of the drug, buprenorphine, for the past 18 months,
- Thu, 02 Mar 2000 US TX: A Prescription For Beating Heroin The National Institutes of Health concur, saying methadone "significantly lowers illicit opiate drug use, reduces death and crime and enhances social productivity."
- Tue, 29 Feb 2000 UK: Mum And Dad's Divorce Turned My Brother Into A Junkie. The former Rangers player said his younger brother, Ronnie, 32, threw his life away after the marriage split 14 years ago.
- February 7, 2000 issue of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Weekly. Karl Sporer, M.D., an emergency physician at San Francisco General Hospital, has found that the combination of heroin and other central nervous system depressants attributes most frequently to overdose. "Most patients who die of heroin-related causes have significant alcohol (29 to 75 percent) or benzodiazepine (5 to 12 percent) levels."
- Thu, 3 Feb 2000 Australia: Users Heroin-free After Controversial Detox Drug. Almost half of the first 54 Victorian heroin addicts to receive a controversial rapid detoxification were still drug free a year later, a clinic has claimed.
- Wed, 2 Feb 2000 US OR: Heroin Retains Tight Grip On Oregon As Deaths Rise According to statistics the Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office will released today, a record 246 people died of drug-related causes in Oregon in 1999 -- a 320 percent increase from 1989. Of those, 79 percent are because of heroin. Many who ended up dead last year had recently returned to the drug after abstaining, either because of jail time or an attempt at rehabilitation, said Dr. Karen Gunson, state medical examiner. (I wonder what good it would do to warn users of this kindling affect? this is probably what made Tommy susceptible to OD and dying as he had been out of rehab for only 2 weeks.)
- Sun, 30 Jan 2000 US UT: Heroin Overdose Deaths Rise Factory-direct drug shipments from Mexico are bringing more powerful and less-expensive loads of heroin into Salt Lake County, resulting in a sixfold increase in overdose deaths in recent years.
- Sat, 29 Jan 2000 Netherlands: Aging Dutch Junkies Go To Special Home. Hard drugs users are growing older, and their habit takes its toll. They often face in their 40s the same problems people normally experience only in their early 70s.
- Wed, 26 Jan 2000 UK: New Warning On Killer Jellies Although heroin is considered to be the main killer, toxicologist Dr John Oliver claims temazepam is also a significant factor.
- Sun, 23 Jan 2000 US FL: Heroin: The Worst Is Yet To Come. The day comes when demand breaks the walls dividing society. That day is very close for Greater Orlando. Heroin has devastated portions of the Hispanic community here for years. Now, all the signs indicate it is on the verge of expansion.
- Thu, 6 Jan 2000-US FL: Drug Presses Came With Tips, Cops Say. A clerk at the Apollo of Miami Tobacco Shop told agents they could boost their profits by mixing heroin or cocaine with baby laxative and press it into blocks to be resold as uncut drugs,
- Thu, 06 Jan 2000- US NY: Heroin Hassles - Medical and Legal Issues Keep Overdose ANTIDOTE OUT OF USERS' HANDS - If you have a H habit or a loved one who has one then not only should you never shoot up alone but you should have naloxone around.
- Mon, 10 Jan 2000- US MI: Heroin Makes A Deadly Comeback. "We ought to worry about this. We have a public health problem," said Oakland County Medical Examiner Dr. L.J. Dragovic. He has seen the number of overdose-related deaths climb dramatically during the past two years.
- Mon, 10 Jan 2000- UK: 'Drugs Overdose' Killed Girl, 15, On Christmas Night. She is thought to have died from an overdose of the heroin substitute methadone.
- Mon, 10 Jan 2000-US MA: In South Boston, Heroin Still Stalks The Young
- Fri, 07 Jan 2000 US MA: Hub Schools Mount New Drive To Halt Heroin. `It's a community-based problem and it seems to be evolving,'' Payzant said. ``You used to think of heroin as more of an adult drug. Now it's not just attracting older teens, but younger teens in the middle-school age bracket.''
- Thu, 06 Jan 2000- US CA: Abscesses Plague Addicts, Ravage City's Health Budget. Covered in scars, and missing chunks of his buttocks, John Bunkley is one of thousands of walking examples of what skin abscesses are doing to San Francisco's heroin addicts.
- Thu, 06 Jan 2000-US NV: Death In Vegas. The fatal drug overdose and the suicide of two respected staffer's stunned the Las Vegas Review-Journal's newsroom.
- Sat, 25 Dec 1999 Afghanistan: Desert Village That Feeds A Global Heroin Habit. Pakistani drug-enforcement officers estimate that two-thirds of the heroin sold in Britain has come through the village.
- Wed, 22 Dec 1999; US IL: The Walgreens' War, Second Drug Death Finishes Family. Here's another sad sad story. Such a shame.
- Sun, 19 Dec 1999 US: The Swiss Heroin Trials: Scientifically Sound?
- Sat, 18 Dec 1999; US MD: Suspects Accused Of Failing To Get Help so young 21 year-old dies in the process from an O.D.
- Thu, 16 Dec 1999; UK: Minister Whose Son Died Urges Fight Against Drugs.
- Mon, 06 Dec 1999 US OR: Ritual Dance Of Heroin Trade Makes Big Strides In Eugene. Police Find Few Penalties Will Deter Street-Level Dealers As The Drug Flows From Mexico Into The Liberal City
- Tue, 07 Dec 1999; US OR Heroin's Escalating Toll On The Community Measured In Death, Crime And Younger Users. Compelling must read story for parents suspicious of their child's behavior. Part 1 and part 2.
- Wed, 01 Dec 1999 US NY: CHASING the dragon-the practice of inhaling heroin fumes-can cause spongy holes in the brain, according to neurologists in New York.
- Sat, 27 Nov 1999 US NY: Charge / Murder, Son Killed prominent Parents, Police Say. Son was on methadone/heroin addict. Then came back4 days later t burn the corpses.
- Fri, 26 Nov 1999 HEROIN BLAMED FOR DEATH OF COLLEGIAN BACK IN BOONTON TWP. FOR HOLIDAY. Apparently died from snorting H. Terrible story. 19-year-old Patrick Howe dies. Also this stat is sited- "One1998 poll found that one in four high school seniors uses heroin," That's extremely high.
- Tue, 23 Nov1999 Ireland: Heroin Abuse Growing As Younger Teens Turn To Drugs. Children as young as 12 are heroin addicts in Dublin
- Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Age, The (Australia). Heroin Boom In The Country. I know from clients that there is no longer a need for them to go to Melbourne to get heroin because it is available here. Heroin use is growing in the hinterlands!!
- Thu, 25 Nov 1999, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia). Heroin Users Starting Younger At $25 A Hit, An all time low! . The age of initiation among younger users has dropped two years to 17,
- Sun, 21 Nov 1999 Australia-incurable strain of hepatitis was now the biggest health threat to injecting drug users. Snort, Smoke, But Don't Inject!
- Thu, 18 Nov 1999 Book Extract: Death by Heroin, Recovery by Hope. Within a space of three weeks Mary Kenny lost her two beloved nephews. Both were intelligent, funny young men with a lifetime of potential ahead of them.
- Wed, 17 Nov 1999 US CA: Families Struggle To Make Sense Of VA Shooting
- Sat, 13 Nov 1999 A Deadly Disease May Be Evolving In The Veins Of Junkies INTRAVENOUS drug abusers are harbouring a virus that is evolving 300 times faster than usual and could turn nasty,
- Sun, 31 Oct 1999 Source: Age, The (Australia. Good article about H from a dying junkie who got AIDS from a dirty needle.
- US CA: Some Tar Heroin Carries Deadly Form Of Botulism Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999
- Mon, 11 Oct 1999 US NM: Days After Drug Raid, Overdoses kill 2
- Sun, 26 Sep 1999 UK: Heroin Users Start At Eight. So far this year 108 addicts have died on the streets of Glasgow'
>From the SUBABUSE Email List:
This article appeared in the February 7, 2000 issue of Alcoholism and
Drug
Abuse Weekly. Electronically reprinted with permission. For information
about subscriptions call 800-333-7771
Diverse audience seeks answers in combating heroin overdose
by Treece Wright
During the past decade there has been an alarming increase in the
number of fatal heroin overdoses in the United States. San Francisco
and Seattle have seen a doubling of heroin overdoses in the 1990s.
Nationally, the number of overdoses in 42 cities increased 17 percent
in recent years, from 3,653 in 1994 to 4,270 in 1997, according to
recent news reports.
It is because of these numbers that more than 400 people gathered
in
Seattle last month to attend "Preventing Heroin Overdoses: Pragmatic
Approaches," a two-day conference sponsored by the Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Institute at the University of Washington and The Lindesmith
Center.
Conference panelists hailed from North America, Australia and Europe
and included medical providers, epidemiologists, outreach workers,
law enforcement personnel, recovering users and active injecting drug
users. This cross-current of experts, unfamiliar with sharing the
podium as equals, rose above ideological polemics to deliver
reasoned, practical and well-documented research on strategies to
curb the rising trend in heroin- related death.
Participants and attendees put politics aside to stay focused on the
conference objective - sharing information to save human lives.
Many of the conclusions corroborated one another in defining risk
factors leading to potential overdose, as well as survival strategies
after an overdose has occurred.
Before the conference I believed that the fluctuation of purity level
was the main culprit of accidental overdose. But while potency is a
risk factor, it is not the most defining contributor observed in
posthumous examination.
Karl Sporer, M.D., an emergency physician at San
Francisco General
Hospital, has found that the combination of heroin and other central
nervous system depressants attributes most frequently to overdose.
"Most patients who die of heroin-related causes have significant
alcohol (29 to 75 percent) or benzodiazepine (5 to 12 percent)
levels."
The presence of benzodiazepines such as the anti-anxiety drugs
diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax) and clonazepam (Klonopin) in
the bloodstream of overdose victims was echoed in findings from
Australia and other studies in the United States and Canada.
Another critical fact I learned was that heroin overdose is not an
instant death. Sporer stated that, "most decedents are estimated to
have died 1 to 3 hours after injection, a time interval that would
allow intervention." The majority of overdoses occur in the presence
of another person.
While there is much talk of calming the relations between drug users
and the law enforcement community to encourage the utilization of
emergency services, fear of police involvement continues to impede
911 usage in most overdose cases. The presence of the Seattle Police
Department as a co-sponsor of last month's event indicates a sea
change in that traditionally acrimonious relationship.
Both medical professionals and drug users emphatically suggested that
by learning some basic first aid, injecting drug partners could
assist in life-saving interventions. Rescue breathing could
potentially reverse the respiratory depression and hypoxia
(deficiency of oxygen reaching body tissues) associated with fatal
overdose.
CPR, administered only in the absence of a pulse and by a trained
person, is a more complicated but easily learned technique that may
reactivate a seized heart.
Some needle exchange organizations are actively teaching their
clients about these kinds of first aid skills. The American Red
Cross, the nation's largest provided of community-based,
cardiopulmonary resuscitation education, could be a valuable resource.
With such a controversial topic, it was a triumph to attract 400
people to the conference amid the rain and chill of a Seattle winter.
We came in the spirit of caring and concern and we left empowered
with the knowledge that although drug overdoses are very serious,
they do not have to be fatal. Pass it on.
Treece Wright is a freelance writer and drug policy reform activist
in San Francisco. She can be contacted at treece@sirius.
Greetings List Members,
I've been "lurking" in the shadows since
signing on a few weeks ago, and
would like to introduce myself and comment on
opiate addiction and its
effect on the addicted individual.
I'm Joe Neuberger, director of the Delaware
Chapter: National Alliance
of Methadone Advocates, a state chapter in the
USA. I'm also a 25+ year
opiate addicted individual. I have had periods of
"clean" time, and am so
today. In this journey, I've learned many things
about addiction and its
toll on the body and spirit. I have many times
looked into the mirror and
wondered "what is wrong with me?" Wanting to be
rid of this all-encompasing
monster, but unable to do it. Wanting the "right"
thing; unable to attain
it. It can be a painful process, with bits of a
life hard-earned ever lost
with each relapse. A business, a home, a
loved-one, friends.
And with time and five admissions to Methadone
treatment I was able to
"learn through living" what I've come to realize
is the results of all
medical research related to this particular
disorder. That many of us,
indeed an overwhelming number, are striving for
something that we can not
have, i.e. an opiate-free life. Why? Because of
the long-term effects of
opiate abuse. These long-term effects are proven
in the research to be a
permanent change in the chemistry of the brain.
Endorphin damage. An
imbalance that drives compulsion. I have lived it.
In the advocacy work that I'm presently
involved in I explain it in this
way: Imbalance produces ----Thought, which
produces----Action. The
imbalance in the endorphins in the brain produces
the "Let's go cop" thought
as the body's way of seeking its needed
equilibrium. This thought results
in the action of opiate use.
Now, if this process's net result was a
harmless "stubbing of the toe"
we'd not be members of this list. But its results
are the litney of Felony
Crime; Loss of Freedom; Exposure to AIDS; and on
and and culminating in Loss
of Life. And we all could list the names of those
who've lost this battle. A
battle of the endorphins which the research tells
us 85% of us are destined
to lose.
But I'm among the lucky ones. I've discovered
that with endorphin
replacement therapy the Thought ("Let's go Cop")
does not come. Therefore
the Action (Felony Crime, etc.) does not occur.
It's called Methadone
Maintenance Treatment and, contrary to the
thoughts of many, it's needed as
a permanent treatment for the great majority of
long-term abusers. Now, this
is not my "beliefs" vs the "beliefs" of others.
This is the results of the
decades of research that has surrounded this
affliction.
People ask me "How do I know if this is me??
If I'm one of the 85%." And
I tell them, "Let relapse be your guide." If you
have wanted to be free of
this monster, and the fight is being lost through
relapse after relapse,
then it is you.
Adequately dosed, the addicted individual on
Methadone Maintenance can
go and lead a normal life. There's no "high" here.
Only Endorphin
replacement therapy. No different than treating
diabetes or a heart
condition. I only wish I'd have discovered these
truths of science on my
first admission to MMT. I may have saved the price
of four relapses. Ever so
expensive, but I was lucky in that I was never
asked to pay with my life.
Sorry for the length. Good luck to all.
Joe Neuberger
Rene Stutzman
of The Sentinel Staff
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on
March 30, 2000
SANFORD -- An Oviedo restaurant owner accused of providing the drugs that killed an 18-year-old employee agreed to a plea deal Wednesday that will spare him from jail.
William Charles Foulkes Jr., 46, of Winter Springs, had been charged with
manslaughter in the death of Keith Tedesco. Foulkes, owner of Bill's
Elbow South,
pleaded no contest to being an accessory after
the fact, a felony. He is scheduled to be sentenced to five
years probation on
May 22.
Tedesco lapsed into a coma June 1,1997, and died a
week later without regaining consciousness.
Assistant State Attorney Charley Tabscott said Tedesco
had ingested heroin, cocaine, Valium and marijuana.
The medical examiner concluded he died from "multiple
drug toxicity," Tabscott said.
The victim's family was angry about the sentence.
"This has devastated my whole family," said Pam Tedesco, Keith Tedesco's
mother.
Both prosecutors and the defense agreed that Tedesco
had ingested a variety of drugs. They also agreed that
the victim was working as a waiter on
May 31, 1997,
when he started to get sick. Foulkes
sent Tedesco home
early. Because of a falling-out with his
parents, he was staying at Foulkes' Tuscawilla home, his
family said.
When Foulkes came home, he didn't check on Tedesco, both sides agreed.
Foulkes did check on him about 9:30 a.m. June 1 and realized he was
having trouble breathing, but did not call for help,
both sides said.
It was not until five hours later,when Foulkes noticed Tedesco had stopped
breathing, that he called an ambulance, they said.
"We believe he's responsible for Keith's death," said Thomas Tedesco, Keith Tedesco's father. Foulkes did not return a phone call to his restaurant Wednesday afternoon.
Posted Mar 29 2000 11:08PM