Answer Addiction

Tag: opioid addiction

  • Does Opioid Abuse Play A Role In Breast Cancer Deaths In Appalachia?

    Does Opioid Abuse Play A Role In Breast Cancer Deaths In Appalachia?

    One expert believes that opioid use disorder is connected to the high rates of breast cancer deaths in the region.

    Women in Appalachia—especially West Virginia and Kentucky—have higher mortality rates from breast cancer than their counterparts around the country, and one researcher says that opioid abuse might be to blame.

    In an essay for The Conversation, Rajesh Balkrishnan, a professor of public health sciences at the University of Virginia, said that opioid abuse could be a factor in up to 60% of breast cancer deaths in the region.

    “Breast cancer death rates continue to remain abnormally high in the Appalachian region of the United States, and it’s partially due to a different epidemic in the U.S: opioid use,” he writes.

    Long-term hormone treatments can be lifesaving for breast cancer patients, but using opioids to combat their side effects opens people up to another deadly disease: opioid use disorder. Cancer patients are often prescribed opioids for pain management, including the pain and fatigue that accompany hormone treatments.

    “Although opioids are not considered first-line treatment for cancer-related pain, they are increasingly used to manage unbearable pain in breast cancer survivors,” Balkrishnan writes. “One thing that struck me when I looked at health insurance and cancer registry data was the extremely high and prolonged rate of use of dangerous medications like opioids in this population, sometimes as high as 50% in some areas.”

    Balkrishnan’s team of researchers found that Appalachia has the most concentrated number of counties with exceptionally high opioid prescription rates—up to 65% above the national average.

    This leaves people at risk for developing addiction, and can interfere with the long-term health of breast cancer patients, since many stop taking their hormone therapy medications when they become dependent on opioids, Balkrishnan believes.

    “The picture that emerges is indeed a grim one. We find many patients in Appalachia who undergo successful breast cancer treatment and then start life-prolonging hormone treatments along with opioids to manage side effects such as pain,” Balkrishnan writes.

    “But many (over half in some counties) continue to remain on opioids, which are usually supposed to be prescribed only for the short term, and then discontinue long-term survivorship treatments such as hormones. The reasons these women discontinue traditional treatments is not completely clear, but my colleagues and I suspect it is related to people’s dependence on opioids.”

    Appalachian women have the lowest breast cancer survival rates in the country.

    “It is heartbreaking to see a woman able to beat cancer, only to die because of sub-optimal use of a life-prolonging treatment or misuse of a short-term relief treatment such as opioids,” Balkrishnan writes.

    “We need to work harder to educate and empower Appalachian breast cancer survivors about their treatment choices and decision-making that can be most beneficial to improving their life quality and quantity.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Opioid Addiction Rates Higher Than Expected In Massachusetts, Study Says

    Opioid Addiction Rates Higher Than Expected In Massachusetts, Study Says

    Nearly 5% of Massachusetts residents may be battling opioid use disorder, according to a new study. 

    Health officials in Massachusetts are expressing concern over the results of a new study, which suggests that more residents are struggling with opioid use disorder than previous research had suggested.

    Using information culled from a database for public health information, the study authors found that the number of individuals in the Bay State who have either received treatment for addiction, or who qualify as addicted but have gone undiagnosed, may be as high as 4.6% of residents over the age of 11.

    That number is significantly higher than previous records, which suggested that addiction rates hovered at just over 1%.

    The study was published in the American Journal of Public Health, and sought to determine the annual prevalence of opioid use between 2011 and 2015.

    To do so, researchers used the Massachusetts Public Health Data Warehouse, which links information on hospital and emergency room visits, prescriptions and insurance claims, among other sources, from more than a dozen state agencies.

    Patients are identified with their own unique number so it is possible to track a single individual who may have been admitted to a hospital or ER or received treatment from first responders.

    Researchers looked at information on individuals who, based on such encounters with the health care system, had been or could be determined as suffering from opioid addiction—and identified 119,000 people, or 2% of the state population over the age of 11 in 2015.

    From there, they used statistical methods to estimate the number of people who would be considered as opioid-dependent but have not received any treatment. 

    That formula brought the total number of individuals up to 4.6%, or 275,000 Massachusetts residents over the age of 11 years. Previous research, which determined the 1% rate, was based on national surveys that interviewed only those people who had sought help from the health care system for opioid-related issues.

    Response from the Massachusetts medical community was largely positive in regard to the study’s findings. The Boston Globe quoted Dr. Joshua A. Barocas, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center, who said, “[The study] is a good wake-up call. Our pool of people who are at risk for overdoses is potentially higher than we thought it was.” 

    The study also drew criticism from Dr. Silvia S. Martins, director of the Substance Abuse Epidemiology Unit at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her response stemmed from what she viewed as a broad definition of opioid use disorder, which may have inflated the statistics.

    “The analysis could have been done in a more precise way,” she said.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "The Conners" Producer Discusses Roseanne's Overdose Death

    "The Conners" Producer Discusses Roseanne's Overdose Death

    “We could’ve gone down other avenues, but we felt it was the right thing for the character. As you know, it’s a crisis in this country.”

    The return of Roseanne was one of the biggest comeback stories of the year—until Roseanne Barr got fired for posting inflammatory tweets this May.

    The show has since been rebooted without her as The Conners, and as rumored, her character dies of an opioid overdose.

    Before Barr was fired, her character was keeping “secret bottles” of Vicodin stashed in her home because the family couldn’t afford an operation and she was trying to deal with chronic pain in her knee.

    Like many who suffer from chronic pain, Roseanne Conner got her meds illegally, buying them through her neighbor Marcy (played by Mary Steenburgen).

    Through Steenburgen, Dan Conner (John Goodman) realizes that many in the neighborhood are getting their meds this way.

    “We thought we’d include issues such as a lack of proper healthcare and the prohibitive costs of medications that many face,” said executive producer Tom Werner to Forbes. “I think the conversation between Marcy and Dan made the story quite affecting because, obviously it was an accident, but an accident that seems to be happening frequently. Their conversation became part of a larger issue of people in a community passing along drugs either not being prescribed them by a doctor, or drugs being too expensive and unaffordable. This is part of a bigger issue in this country.”

    In making the decision to kill off Roseanne, Werner added, “Obviously, it is important for us to do the show respectfully. We could’ve gone down other avenues, but we felt it was the right thing for the character. As you know, it’s a crisis in this country.”

    Bruce Helford, who is the showrunner of The Conners, told The Hollywood Reporter, “There was a lot of chatter in the ether about how we should explain Roseanne’s absence: Should she have a heart attack, a mental breakdown or go off into the sunset on a boat with her son? But we firmly decided against anything cowardly or far-fetched, anything that would make the fierce matriarch of the Conners seem pathetic or debased.

    “I wanted a respectful sendoff for her,” Helford continued. “One that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the American working class, whose authentic problems are often ignored by broadcast television.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "The Connors" Producer Discusses Roseanne's Overdose Death

    "The Connors" Producer Discusses Roseanne's Overdose Death

    “We could’ve gone down other avenues, but we felt it was the right thing for the character. As you know, it’s a crisis in this country.”

    The return of Roseanne was one of the biggest comeback stories of the year until Roseanne Barr got fired for posting inflammatory tweets this May.

    The show has since been rebooted without her as The Conners, and as rumored, her character dies of an opioid overdose.

    Before Barr was fired, her character was keeping “secret bottles” of Vicodin stashed in her home because the family couldn’t afford an operation and she was trying to deal with chronic pain in her knee.

    Like many who suffer from chronic pain, Roseanne Conner got her meds on the black market, buying them through her neighbor Marcy, played by Mary Steenburgen.

    Through Steenburgen, Dan Conner (John Goodman) realizes that many in the neighborhood are getting their meds this way.

    The show’s executive producer, Tom Werner, told Forbes, “We thought we’d include issues such as a lack of proper healthcare and the prohibitive costs of medications that many face. I think the conversation between Marcy and Dan made the story quite affecting because, obviously it was an accident, but an accident that seems to be happening frequently. Their conversation became part of a larger issue of people in a community passing along drugs either not being prescribed them by a doctor, or drugs being too expensive and unaffordable. This is part of a bigger issue in this country.”

    In making the decision to kill off Roseanne, Werner added, “Obviously, it is important for us to do the show respectfully. We could’ve gone down other avenues, but we felt it was the right thing for the character. As you know, it’s a crisis in this country.”

    Bruce Helford, who is the showrunner of The Conners, told The Hollywood Reporter, “There was a lot of chatter in the ether about how we should explain Roseanne’s absence: Should she have a heart attack, a mental breakdown or go off into the sunset on a boat with her son? But we firmly decided against anything cowardly or far-fetched, anything that would make the fierce matriarch of the Conners seem pathetic or debased.

    “I wanted a respectful sendoff for her,” Helford continued. “One that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the American working class, whose authentic problems are often ignored by broadcast television.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Jamie Lee Curtis: Sobriety Changed Everything

    Jamie Lee Curtis: Sobriety Changed Everything

    The “Halloween” actress revealed in an interview that she would not be where she is now without sobriety.

    Now coming up on her 60th birthday, movie star Jamie Lee Curtis is focused on her legacy.

    “I want to die having said something,” she told USA Today.

    Curtis stars in the newest Halloween film, re-assuming her debut role as Laurie Strode to once again face the masked murderer Michael Myers. Between that first starring role and this most recent redux, Curtis has played a wide range of characters in a variety of genres. But the road was not always easy, and it was during these times that Curtis used alcohol and opioids to deal with the stress. She recalls the summer of 1987, trying to balance work and family while shooting A Fish Called Wanda.

    “My memory of A Fish Called Wanda is that I cried every day to and from work. Not that I laughed, not that it was super-fun, nothing,” she said. “My memory of A Fish Called Wanda was leaving my sleeping 6-month-old daughter, going to work an hour away and then working 12 hours, sometimes more, and then an hour back, often to a child asleep again. And that was like the beginning of it all for me.”

    Looking back, Curtis realized she was forgetting to take care of herself.

    “I think I was replicating my mom and really trying to just make everybody happy,” she reflected.

    Curtis has been candid about her former addiction and her sobriety, now going on two decades. Of all the things she’s accomplished, Curtis once said she considers getting sober her number one accomplishment.

    “As soon as I got sober, which is 20 years coming up in February, everything changed,” she said. “Because it was a big, big acknowledgment that I could not do all of the things I was trying to do.”

    The secret, Curtis suggested, was in prioritizing what really matters.

    “All I hear is the grading, the rank ordering in my industry. A-list. A-listers. I’m in B-movies. That’s how I’ve buttered my bread. And horror movies are like at the bottom end of the scale,” she said, referring to her legacy as a horror film scream queen. “…And yet I have navigated 40 years. I sold yogurt that made you poop for five years because it was a gig that allowed me to stay home and be a mom the way I needed to be a mom.”

    The newest Halloween, starring Curtis, Judy Greer and Andi Matichak, arrived in theaters on October 19.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Backstreet Boy AJ McLean Inspired to Fight Addiction After Mac Miller’s Passing

    Backstreet Boy AJ McLean Inspired to Fight Addiction After Mac Miller’s Passing

    The pop star is throwing his weight behind a new line of home products made to help those struggling with addiction.

    The boy band singer is driven to stay sober and fight addiction with a new line of recovery products.

    Singer AJ McLean is leaning in to the fight against addiction following Mac Miller’s death. Having battled his own addictions in the past, McLean knows Miller’s struggles all too well.

    “I met him a couple of times at radio shows and he was a stand-up guy,” McLean told ET. “You would never know that he had a problem — but a lot of people had no idea that I had a problem. Addicts can hide it pretty well, so all my condolences go to his family and friends. He’s another one gone too soon.”

    McLean himself has two young daughters as motivation to stay sober, but Miller’s passing has given McLean a renewed vigor in combating addiction. He’s throwing his weight behind a new line of home products made to help those struggling with substance abuse, with a special focus on opioids.

    “With what recently happened with Mac Miller, people need to really understand how serious addiction is,” he remarked. “It’s a huge killer and you’ve just got to surround yourself with the right people, go to your meetings and get a sponsor. It’s a marathon, not a race. I’m getting involved with a pharmaceutical company that is going to be putting out some amazing products. One is an at-home opioid detox kit, non-narcotic because one of the biggest [causes of] deaths in the entire world right now is based on opioids.”

    In 2001, the Backstreet Boys stopped their Black & Blue tour to allow McLean to go to rehab for alcohol abuse treatment. He’s been open about his recovery process, fessing up to having relapsed on booze in the past during his recovery. To this day, McLean still does his best to attend at least five Alcoholics Anonymous meetings per week.

    These days McLean isn’t just staying sober for himself–he has his wife and two daughters, five-year-old Ava and one-year-old Lyric, to look after.

    “Having a family and looking my two girls in the eye every single night and every single morning —  they’re my lifeline,” he admitted. “They’re my everything. Them and my wife. So, I would never in a million years want to let them see me drunk or high or dead or in jail. I want to walk both my girls down the aisle … when they’re 35! As long as I can hold off on boys, I’m going to hold off on boys!”

    McLean’s schedule is pretty busy these days. Besides raising two daughters and backing a range of recover products, he’s also wrapping up work on a new Backstreet Boys album while also working on a solo country record.

    “I have been super busy trying to finish off my solo record, and this past week — I think, hopefully — we finished the Backstreet Boys record!” he told ET. “So, we can have it come out in October as planned, then tour around the world next year.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Are Moms With Opioid Addiction At Heightened Risk For Overdose?

    Are Moms With Opioid Addiction At Heightened Risk For Overdose?

    A new study examined pregnant women and new moms with opioid use disorder.

    After finding out she was pregnant with her second child while in a Massachusetts prison, Katie Raftery entered treatment for heroin use. She stayed seven months, until her son was born. It wasn’t until he was about six weeks old that she began to feel the familiar urges to return to using.

    According to the Sarasota Herald Tribune, a new study shows that women who use opioids, like Raftery, are at greater risk of an overdose in the year following their child’s birth.

    Rather than return to using, Raftery was able to use her insurance coverage and reach out to her doctor to ask for buprenorphine, a medication that can treat opioid use disorder. But not all women in the country have the ability to take similar actions. 

    According to the Herald Tribune, in states that do not offer expanded Medicaid, low-income women lose their insurance coverage eight weeks after giving birth. Addiction experts say this is concerning, as it makes a relapse during postpartum depression and opioid cravings more likely. 

    “As a whole, women with substance use disorders do quite well during pregnancy, due in large extent to access to care, insurance coverage and attention from social services,” Mishka Terplan, an obstetrics and gynecology physician at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, told the newspaper. “Where things fall apart is postpartum. We actually abandon women after delivery.”

    Terplan served as the co-author of the study published last month. During the course of the study, researchers kept track of more than 4,000 women with opioid use disorder in Massachusetts, for the duration of the year before and after giving birth.

    The study’s results indicated that deaths from opioid overdoses decrease during pregnancy, but increase in the seven to 12 months following birth. Since all of the women involved in the study resided in Massachusetts, insurance coverage was not a factor.

    Davida Schiff, lead author of the study and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells the Herald Journal that sustaining care for women well after childbirth is vital.

    “Pregnancy seems to be a time for change. Women tend to make healthier decisions during pregnancy. So, for women with an opioid addiction, it can be a motivating moment,” she said. 

    “We should capitalize on the emotions women feel during pregnancy, and sustain their care or enhance it during the postpartum period, which is arguably the most challenging.”

    The Herald Journal states that while the opioid epidemic has hit the country hard as a whole, it has impacted subgroups, like pregnant women and new moms, especially hard.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that between 1999 and 2014, the number of pregnant women who used opioids more than quadrupled.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Older Americans Sorely Under-Informed About Opioid Risks

    Older Americans Sorely Under-Informed About Opioid Risks

    A new poll uncovered a major lack of communication between doctors and their older patients who use opioids.

    A new poll from the University of Michigan involved a nationally representative sample of 2,000 Americans between ages 50 to 80.

    According to The Atlantic, the results of the poll were an indication of why elderly patients at high risk of opioid overdose: 40% aid their doctor’s did not speak to them about opioid side effects or how to decide when to cut back on the medication.

    SAMHSA reports that the population of those 65 and older expected to use opioids will most likely double between 2004 and 2020.

    The University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging asked the patients what their health-care providers discussed when prescribing opioid medication to them.

    Of the responders, 589 said they had filled an opioid prescription. While they indicated that they knew how often to take the medication, the majority said their doctors or pharmacists did not address the risk of addiction, the risk of overdose, or what to do with excess pills.

    Interestingly, the poll also showed that respondents overwhelmingly support policies that require providers to receive special training for opioid prescribing, as well as to review prescription records and requiring patients to disclose prior opioid medication.

    The populous of the poll include baby boomers (which CNN defines as people born from 1946 to 1964). Sheila Vakharia, a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, told The Atlantic that this group “used alcohol and other drugs at higher rates compared to other generations of older people that have preceded them, which means these same people are at higher risk of overdose and adverse effects because they may be drinking a little bit more often and a little heavier than some folks who are in their 80s.”

    Doctors can sometimes find it difficult to communicate effectively with their older patients for a variety of reasons. Many doctors are overextended, “burnt out,” and simply don’t have enough time with each individual patient. In addition, doctors often don’t think patients’ of a certain age are at risk for addiction, Vakharia mentioned.

    “The messages that doctors give to patients are largely dictated by how they perceive patients,” Vakharia told The Atlantic. “You don’t often see the elderly as a population at risk for developing substance-use disorders.”

    Indeed, older patients who use opioids are not only at risk for addiction, but they are at a higher risk of overdose death than the younger population.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Can Ketamine Use Trigger Opioid-Like Dependency?

    Can Ketamine Use Trigger Opioid-Like Dependency?

    Researchers investigated whether ketamine works on depression by acting like an opioid in the brain.

    Though ketamine has gained the support of some mental health professionals as a possible therapy for depression, a new study suggests that the drug’s anti-depressive qualities may also have a hidden and potentially dangerous side effect: ketamine may offer relief from depressive symptoms by activating the body’s opioid system, which in turn may make some users dependent upon it, like an opioid.

    In an editorial that accompanied the study, Dr. Mark George, professor of psychiatry, radiology and neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina, wrote, “We would hate to treat the depression and suicide epidemics by overusing ketamine, which might unintentionally grow the third head of opioid dependence.”

    The study, conducted by researchers from Stanford University and published in the August 2018 edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, was comprised of a double-blind crossover of 30 adults with treatment-resistant depression, which was defined as having tried at least four antidepressants and receiving no benefit from them.

    The authors looked at 14 of the patients—of which 12 had received, in randomized order, two doses of 0.5 mg of ketamine—once after receiving 50 mg of naltrexone (or Vivitrol) which blocks the brain’s opiate receptors and diminishes cravings for opioids; and once after receiving a placebo instead of the naltrexone—with the injections occurring about a month apart. 

    The goal of the study was to determine whether the naltrexone and ketamine combination would reduce the latter drug’s antidepressant qualities, or its dissociative or opioid-like response.

    The authors’ analysis found that when patients received the placebo/ketamine combination, they experienced what Live Science called a “dramatic reduction” of their depressive symptoms. But the naltrexone/ketamine combination appeared to have no effect on their symptoms.

    Additionally, those participants who received naltrexone experienced the dissociative effects of ketamine, which include hallucinations, which prompted the authors to cut the study short to avoid exposing more participants to a “clearly ineffective and noxious combination treatment,” as the study noted.

    The scope of the study was small, and as George (who was not involved in the study) noted, additional research is required in order to determine if the ketamine’s antidepressant qualities are caused by its impact on opioid receptors or another receptor. He ultimately expressed caution in regard to using ketamine for the treatment of depression.

    “Ketamine clinics that do not focus on accurate diagnosis, use proper symptom rating instruments and discuss long-term treatment options are likely not in patients’ best interests,” he wrote in the editorial. “We need to better understand ketamine’s mode of action and how it should be used and administered.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Teen Mom Star Amber Portwood Discusses Past Drug Use

    Teen Mom Star Amber Portwood Discusses Past Drug Use

    “I was a horrible opiate addict. I would probably do 10 to 20 hydros — if they didn’t have hydros it would be OxyContin or oxycodone.”

    MTV star Amber Portwood recently spoke out about her battle with drug use and her rock bottom. 

    According to US Magazine, the 28-year-old — who is known for her roles on MTV’s 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom and Teen Mom OG — recently spoke about her history of drug use on an episode of the Dopey Podcast. 

    “I have really horrible anger problems because I’m bipolar and borderline, which is not an excuse, but at the time I didn’t know it, so I wasn’t really taking care of myself or really understanding why I was feeling certain emotions,” Portwood said on the podcast. “I’d go party every other day. I’d be a Wednesday, I’m at the f—king bar and whopping ass and s—t, just like getting kicked out of bars or I got kicked out of our Walmart.”

    She added, “There’s like pictures of me beating up a girl in iHop. It was just crazy. I don’t know where the hell I was. I was gone. You can blame the drugs for the most part for kind of being impulsive, but it was kind of just me as a person.”

    Portwood’s involvement with MTV dates back to 2009, during the first season of 16 and Pregnant. According to US magazine, she says the “money didn’t help” with her struggles with drugs.

    However, she also stated that she does not blame MTV for those struggles. 

    “When you’re making a lot of money, there’s more drugs,” Portwood said on the podcast. “Every time a drug dealer had a new stash, of whatever, they called me first because they knew I’d buy the whole [stash], because I had the money to do it. It never helps.”

    “I was a horrible opiate addict,” she continued. “I would probably do 10 to 20 hydros — if they didn’t have hydros it would be OxyContin or oxycodone … any kind of opiate that they had, I would try to take. I think it was that feeling of just kind of not being aware that I liked .. I think back in the day I was probably depressed and s—t. That was my ‘go-to’ thing.”

    Over the years, Portwood’s drug use has landed her in various difficult positions. In December 2011, according to US Magazine, she was arrested for violating probation after she pleaded guilty to two counts of domestic battery. Then, in 2012, she chose to step away from her court-ordered treatment program and serve five years in prison instead. 

    On the podcast, Portwood explained that her rock bottom came at her grandmother’s house and that was her reasoning for deciding to serve time.

    “Nothing else was working,” she said. “I had overdosed at my grandma’s house on fentanyl in the bathroom. It was daylight when I was awake … I woke up on the floor, like, just drooling out of my mouth. It was nighttime, I had no clue how long I had been in there,” she revealed.

    Despite her history with drugs, Portwood states she can now drink in small amounts. 

    “Now I can have a glass of wine every now and again,” she said. “It’s not every day. It’s not every month.”

    View the original article at thefix.com