Cigarette and alcohol use by eighth, 10th and 12th-graders are at their lowest point since the Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey began polling teenagers in 1975, according to this year’s survey results. However, this positive news is tempered by a slowing rate of decline in teen smoking as well as continued high rates of abuse of other tobacco products (e.g., hookahs, small cigars, smokeless tobacco), marijuana and prescription drugs. The survey results appeared to show that more teens continue to abuse marijuana than cigarettes; and alcohol is still the drug of choice among all three age groups queried. MTF is an annual survey of eighth, 10th, and 12th-graders conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, under a grant from NIDA. Read more ⇒
Addiction has become a hot topic in media coverage, given the on-again, off-again escapades of celebrity addicts, and the popularity of reality television’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, Sober House,Intervention and Addicted. Apparently, addiction sells, or at least the drama and nail-biting narrative that often accompanies it.
On the up side, such attention has raised awareness of the disease and may even prove an aid in its prevention. The down side: perpetuation of the ugly stigma of addiction and the neglect of its prettier-yet-not-as-compelling counterpart, recovery.
During a recent phone interview with Dr. Drew Pinsky of Celebrity Rehab fame, I asked how he answered the criticism that his television shows promote stigma by focusing on fallen D-listers at their most vulnerable and volatile. “Look at the objective reality,” he said. “We have raised awareness of the nature of addiction, how common addiction is, how it doesn’t discriminate. We have pulled the curtain back on this mysterious thing called treatment.”
Pinsky communicated a real concern for educating the public about addiction and treatment and using whatever means in his power to reach the widest audience. He believes the portrayal of addiction and recovery in the media is getting better. “It’s just getting more accurate, more realistic.” He also notes that Celebrity Rehabfollows each season’s patients in Celebrity Rehab Revisited, to underscore the possibility and promise of recovery.
And realistic it is: some of the show’s stars have relapsed, some have succumb to the disease (former Alice in Chains bassist and one of the show’s graduates, Mike Starr , died last March), and some have gone on to lead healthy, happy lives. Such is the nature of addiction and recovery and Pinsky cannot be faulted for presenting addiction as the cunning, baffling, and ugly foe it is.
Still, media coverage of substance addiction recovery and all its glory is spotty, at best. Television leans toward the sensational and seedy side of addiction, while scores of radio shows, both traditional and web-based, provide news and views on addiction, treatment information and fellowship opportunities, but largely ignore the benefits and maintenance of a recovery lifestyle and fail to impact the larger public consciousness.
Yes, we’ve moved away from those lovable portrayals of family drunks on the big screen (think Uncle Billy in It’s a Wonderful Life) in favor of exacting portraits of addiction (Ray, 28 Days, Walk the Line), but few films follow the narrative arc past the addict’s redemption or demise to explore recovery’s happy ending. Exceptions have sprouted in both print and digital media. Some bright spots on the horizon are the webcasts fueled by the search engine powerhouse, YouTube. Recovery Community Organizations (RCOs) such as Minnesota Recovery Connection report utilizing YouTube to upload video of their recovery events to promote advocacy and, says Executive Director Nell Hurley, allow the general public “to see the reality of recovery.” Original web programs such as “Recovery Now” produced by RecoveryNowTV.com highlight the possibility of recovery by following the stories of addicts before and after their recovery journey.
Such a window into the wonderful world of recovery shows promise, but is largely overshadowed by the mountain of preventative and educational programming on addiction and treatment provider promotions. And it is still unclear just how many viewers are actually tuning in on a regular basis, or who those viewers are. Such programming may prove to be a wonderful tool for prevention and intervention, and especially good at connecting addicts or their loved ones to treatment options, but again, leaves little or no impression on a public that continues to marginalize active and recovering addicts.
As the former editorial director of Renew magazine, the only national recovery lifestyle publication, I was reminded by the grateful communications from our readers that there is a healthy and hungry audience for positive recovery messages. But our work has just begun. If we are to diminish addiction’s stigma while also conveying to addicts still suffering that the future does indeed hold promise, we must effectively communicate the positive, empowering, transformative nature of recovery across all media and in a way that engages all audiences.
I recently asked retired General Barry McCaffrey what he had learned in his many years as an advocate for addiction prevention. The former director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy immediately offered his impression of the recovery community as a lesson he had learned and hoped to share.
“What I’ve found that has been consistent for 15 years is, the recovery community is a place of charity and kindness and optimism and hope and lack of violence,” McCaffrey said. “And it’s people who have been in abject misery and now their struggling to be free. So lesson number one that I’ve learned is, it’s an incredibly uplifting experience and an honor to work for the recovering community.”
New Strategy to Supplement Existing Obama Administration Initiatives Working to Reduce Demand for Drugs in the United States; Balance Drug Prevention, Treatment, and Law Enforcement Efforts
Washington, D.C. – Today, Gil Kerlikowske, Director of National Drug Control Policy, released the Obama Administration’s first-ever NationalNorthern Border Counternarcotics Strategy. The Strategy outlines new actions that seek to reduce the two-way flow of illicit drugs between the United States and Canada by increasing coordination among Federal, state, local, and tribal enforcement authorities, enhancing intelligence sharing between counterdrug agencies, and strengthening ongoing counterdrug partnerships and initiatives with the Government of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
“Our shared border—which separates two friendly nations with a long history of social, cultural, and economic ties—demands a specific strategy to confront the unique threats presented by illegal drug trafficking,” said Director Kerlikowske. “Drug use and its consequences are significant threats to the public health and safety of communities in both the United States and Canada. As we work to emphasize drug prevention, treatment, and recovery initiatives in the United States, we must ensure that we also build and expand upon existing initiatives that work to protect public safety and health along our Northern border by disrupting drug trafficking.”
“Disrupting the flow of illegal drugs across our borders is critical to our nation’s safety and security,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. “I look forward to continuing to work closely with our Canadian partners to strengthen security along the Northern border while facilitating legal travel and trade.”
Ecstasy and marijuana are common drug threats to the United States from Canada, while the United States remains the primary transit country for cocaine into Canada from South America. The National Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy provides an overview of current counterdrug efforts and identifies supporting actions aimed at disrupting this cross-border flow of illegal drugs. Some key strategic objectives outlined in the Strategyinclude:
- Enhancing coordination of intelligence collection among the U.S. Federal, state, local, tribal and Canadian law enforcement agencies with Northern border counternarcotics responsibilities.
- Increasing the amount seized of illicit narcotics and drug proceeds crossing the Northern border by bolstering security at and between ports of entry.
- Enhancing air and maritime domain awareness and response capabilities along the Northern Border.
- Developing resources and providing training opportunities to tribal law enforcement agencies.
- Targeting the financial infrastructure of Transnational Criminal Organizations and increasing judicial cooperation with the Government of Canada.
ONDCP is coordinating an unprecedented government-wide public health and safety approach to reduce drug use and its consequences in the United States. In addition to the enforcement-focused actions in this Strategy, the Administration recognizes the important role prevention and treatment play in reducing the demand for drugs and creating healthier communities. Overall drug use in the United States has dropped substantially over the past thirty years. More recently, cocaine use has dropped by 40 percent, and meth use in America has been cut by half. To build on this progress and support the public health approach to drug control outlined in the National Drug Control Strategy, the Obama Administration has committed over $10 billion to drug prevention programs and support for expanding access to drug treatment for people with substance use disorders.
For more information or to read the full Strategy visit:
Big Pharama wants to put as many drugs in as many households as possible — whether they’re needed or not
Some people remember 1982, when some twisted humanoid put cyanide into extra-strength Tylenol capsules and killed seven people.
Well, forget about 1982. Today the danger is not from some sociopath lacing pills with poison, but from the drug companies themselves.
Big Pharma
“Iatrogenic” is a great Scrabble word, but it’s also one that you should remember if you or your kids see doctors or take prescription drugs. It means: induced inadvertently by a physician or medical treatment, including prescription medications. If, in the course of a procedure, a doctor nicks an artery and you die, that is an iatrogenic accident. If your son gets the antidepressant Wellbutrin for his bipolar disorder and he commits suicide in a manic psychosis, that too is an iatrogenic “event,” as the drug companies call it.
Each year in the United States, as many as 225,000 deaths are iatrogenic, making it the third leading cause of death. The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that about 106,000 deaths per year are from “non-error, adverse” effects of prescription meds, making this the fourth leading cause of death in the US. This dwarfs yearly automobile accidents and, in fact, accounts for more deaths than all other accidents combined.
Only heart disease, cancer and strokes kill more Americans than prescription drugs. This shocking figure does not include drugs administered erroneously, nor does it include purposeful overdoses in suicide attempts.
Less deadly but certainly more pervasive is the indiscriminate mindfuck of our kids by the prescription and over-the-counter drug industry, or Big Pharma. Because, unlike the old days of “miracle” drugs and “better living through chemistry,” the name of the game now is profits and indiscriminate placement of as many drugs in as many households (and young bodies and minds) as possible.
It only takes one diagnosis
As a student at Montalvo Elementary and Balboa Middle schools in Ventura, Kelli (not her real name) says she “always kept to myself, couldn’t pay attention and had no friends,” although she did well in English and graduated from high school. At home, “because my father was emotionally abusive and in a constant rage, I stayed in my room and read. … It got to the point where my teachers begged my parents to get me on some kind of drug for what they called my ADD and depression.”
So Kelli’s childhood was an endless array of tests; meds like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Effexor, Cymbalta, Xanax, Zyprexa, Adderall, Dexedrine and Ritalin; therapists; counselors; diagnoses. One diagnosis led to another and Kelli has been at various times diagnosed with clinical depression, attention deficit disorder (ADD), bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder (BPD).
There is no valid chemical test for any of these things. The diagnoses are completely subjective.
From the age of 11, Kelli used alcohol, speed, cocaine and marijuana, and at 13 began to “cut” (use razor blades to inflict small non-suicidal wounds), and binge and purge on food.
Kelli’s most recent diagnosis in 2004 was borderline personality disorder, and after that she was prescribed three more drugs — even though many experts believe borderline personality disorder does not respond to drug therapy. A borderline person is constantly crossing the “borderlines” between psychosis, neurosis and normalcy, and it’s difficult to pinpoint which condition to treat.
Throughout all this, Kelli was never given the one diagnosis that trumps all others: polysubstance dependence, or addiction to several drugs at once. Experimentation with illegal and non-prescribed drugs was described by her therapists as “self-medication,” but no one thought to use this diagnosis and get her off the drug merry-go-round.
Today Kelli takes only one drug — a mild dose of the antidepressant Wellbutrin — runs marathons, attends support groups like Narcotics Anonymous and has a job as a drug counselor. She has not had a drug or drink or cut or purged in three years.
“The single most important thing a psychiatric patient can do is to stop taking illegal and non-prescribed drugs, including alcohol,” says Dr. Lee Bloom, chief psychiatrist at the Pasadena Recovery Center, which is located on North Raymond Avenue and featured in VH1’s “Celebrity Rehab” series. Sometimes, just breaking these habits can undo years of damage, and can be the “cure” for prolonged ailment (if accompanied by a program of support groups and sponsorship) that prescribed drugs are not capable of providing yet.
The blame for Kelli’s fiasco is not all Big Pharma’s — therapists, physicians, parents and school counselors are too often too quick on the diagnosis and prescription trigger. But drug companies are the real culprits in the disgraceful overmedication of our children.
One step forward, two steps back
There was a time when the phrase “miracle drug” meant something. In the 1940s and 1950s, antibiotics, Salk’s polio vaccine, cortisone and potent psychiatric meds such as Thorazine changed and saved lives.
Americans came to believe that Big Pharma was capable of anything, forgetting that these new drugs also had powerful side effects. Antibiotics sometimes actually make people more prone to infection. Cortisone causes gross systemic changes, and Thorazine sometimes turns people into zombies.
Yet there remains a lingering desire to believe that drugs can cure anything, and Big Pharma takes full advantage of that.
Spending on prescription medicines for patients younger than 19 has increased by 85 percent over the past five years, according to an analysis by Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefits management company and subsidiary of the pharmaceutical concern Merck.
Moreover, American children are three times more likely than European children to be prescribed psychotropic medications for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder, according to a report in the journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health.
But there’s no evidence that prescription drug-happy societies like ours are doing any better at keeping our kids mentally sound.
In fact, the prosperous, politically influential drug companies may be wreaking havoc on the minds and bodies of our youngsters — turning them into potential drug addicts, predisposing them to look for a chemical solution for every ache or pain when a simple thing like exercise or music often works much better.
In the battle for our children’s minds, drug companies use and oversimplified idea that lulls parents and kids into feeling secure about their drugs: the chemical imbalance theory.
Just a theory
Helping to fuel the current psych-med craze is the almost blind acceptance by doctors, therapists, school counselors and parents of the still-unproven chemical imbalance theory.
The chemical imbalance theory is a useful metaphor, and it is often cited in articles on depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), ADD and ADHD. But it is not a valid hypothesis (and the chair of the FDA’s Psychopharmacology Advisory Committee agrees.)
Drug companies would like us to think that psychiatric disorders are the result of a systemic glitch, and that if we take just the right set of psych meds our systems will be restored to a “normal” state and all will be well.
Why do the drug companies use an unproven theory as fact in describing how their drugs work? Because it’s easy for the patient (and the doctor) to understand — and it sounds so … scientific.
Jessica, a 19-year-old patient, describes her situation this way: “I have depression because I don’t have enough serotonin in my body. Serotonin is the chemical that gives people pleasure. My Lexapro contains serotonin, and when I take my Lexapro every day it keeps my serotonin at a constant level and [therefore] keeps my moods consistent.”
That would be a beautiful thing, if we knew it to be true. The official Forest Pharmaceuticals Web site for Lexapro, a commonly prescribed antidepressant, says that people with depression: “Have an imbalance of the brain’s neurotransmitters. …
One of these neurotransmitters is serotonin. An imbalance in serotonin may be an important factor in the development of depression and anxiety. Serotonin is released from one nerve cell and passed to the next. … Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors block the re-absorption of serotonin. … It is this blocking action that causes an increased amount of serotonin to become available at the next nerve cell.”
You may not understand all that (most therapists and many doctors don’t either) but it certainly sounds impressive. And it’s even better when accompanied by beautiful cartoon drawings and animations of neurotransmitters and synapses.
But the cute cartoons ignore this salient fact: The brain chemistry of depression and anxiety is not fully understood.
“Drug therapy is a little better than witchcraft, but not much. There are at least 100 chemicals in the brain that relate to brain function, and we know something about maybe six of them,” said the Pasadena Recovery Center’s Bloom.
Big Pharma wants us to believe that drugs restore the body to a “normal state.” Almost no drug restores normality. Drugs act on different systems in different and sometimes very powerful ways, and may produce an effect that makes the patient feel better or respond in a positive (or at least positive to their parents or doctor) way.
Think about it. Of all the people you know who have been diagnosed with a “chemical imbalance,” how many were tested chemically to arrive at this diagnosis?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which virtually all psychiatrists and therapists use to diagnose patients, plainly states that the cause of depression and anxiety is “unknown.”
Disease-mongering
According to a report in the Public Library of Science and Medicine, pharmaceutical companies may be inventing diseases in order to drive up their sales figures. Researchers said many conditions “are being medicalized” by the industry.
Restless leg syndrome, a relatively rare condition, is being promoted wildly by Big Pharma “detail men” because there are now drugs for it. Disease awareness campaigns funded by the industry are aimed at “promoting drug sales rather than informing people.”
And although ADD, ADHD, depression and bipolar disorder are valid and serious disorders, Big Pharma has certainly broadened definitions of them by promoting “tests” that nearly guarantee that millions will feel they are suffering from those conditions.
The worst part of the whole fiasco is that you can’t really trust “scholarly” research on the drugs you or your kids might take. Big Pharma at least indirectly funds most studies on emerging drugs, and drug companies are allowed to “throw out” non-supportive studies.
To make matters even worse, some “scholarly” articles are ghostwritten by PR firms employed by drug companies. An April editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association describes articles penned by Merck and Co. ghostwriters before Merck had eminent academics credited as primary authors. (These articles were about Vioxx, a drug no longer used because it sometimes kills people.)
Today, many drugs are minor variations on old products. The market is filled with astonishingly similar drugs to treat depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder.
For example, the new antidepressant Lexapro, which is more expensive than cocaine, is touted as “a cleaner, improved version” of Celexa. Actually, it differs only slightly (a molecule or two were modified) from the now generically available Celexa. Most doctors won’t tell you that, because Forest Pharmaceuticals gives away a lot of stuff to doctors to persuade them to recommend the more expensive product.
And many drugs are now used for purposes that have little or nothing to do with their original intent. Adderall, for example, is today the most widely used ADHD drug for kids and teenagers. It’s actually four different kinds of speed.
Adderall was derived from the amphetamine-based diet pill Obetrol, no longer used for weight loss because speed is so widely abused. Adderall sometimes helps kids with ADHD to calm down and focus, and many parents celebrate it because it keeps their kids quiet. But it’s still speed.
The good with the bad
To the concerned professional, it sometimes appears that Big Pharma just throws drugs together, and if these don’t kill the first few human guinea pigs, they go on the market.
Despite all the negatives surrounding Big Pharma, however, it must also be said —unequivocally — that drugs save lives and improve the quality of life.
In 1900, a person could expect to live maybe to the age of 50. Today, the average lifespan is nearly 80. In many ways, we Americans are healthier than ever. Better medical care and equipment, better diets and lifestyles, and more knowledge about health all contributed, but much of the credit also goes to pharmaceuticals.
Thousands of people with rheumatoid arthritis, HIV and AIDS, depression (yes, depression) and cancer are alive or living better lives because of prescription drugs. And we don’t even think about polio, diphtheria, malaria and typhoid anymore, thanks to amazing drug cures.
But we must remain concerned about what Big Pharma is doing, and ask whether we are being hoodwinked into taking more drugs than we need, or whether our children are being overmedicated and maybe even being set up for a lifetime of addiction.
One in five women over the age of 20 is on antidepressants, men between 20 and 64 quadrupled their use of antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety-pill prescriptions for kids 10 to 19 are up 50 percent, according to a new Medco report. Casey Schwartz on the shocking findings.
Make no mistake about it—America is doped up to the gills.
Medco, the nationwide pharmacy-service company, released a report Wednesday laying out the prescription-pill habits of millions of Americans between 2001 and 2010.
Specifically, what the investigators at Medco focused on were “mental-health-related medications,” which fell into four categories: antidepressants, such as Prozac and Paxil; anti-anxiety pills, such as Xanax and Valium; ADHD pills, such as Ritalin and Adderall; and antipsychotics, including Seroquel, Resperadol, and Abilify.
And oh, how familiar these names have all become.
Gary Retherford / Getty Images
Among the many findings in the Medco report:
—In 2010, more than one in five adults was taking at least one of these drugs. That’s a 22 percent increase since 2001.
—Antidepressants are the most popular kind of mental-health medication. In 2010, 21 percent of American women over the age of 20 were prescribed one. For men, antidepressants are roughly half as common, but that number is changing. Twenty-eight percent more men were taking antidepressants in 2010 than in 2001.
—Although it’s women over 45 who take the greatest number of these drugs, it was young men, between 20 and 44 years old, who showed the greatest increase, jumping 43 percent since 2001.
—Eleven percent of middle-aged women are taking anti-anxiety medication, almost double the number of men who do, while kids between 10 and 19 years old increased their use of anti-anxiety pills by 50 percent from the start of the decade.
—Among children, more boys than girls are taking pills like Adderall and Ritalin for ADHD, but girls are gaining on them; 40 percent more girls were taking ADHD medications in 2010 than in 2001. Yet that increase, large as it is, is nothing compared with the increase for women in the 20-to-44 age range, for whom these meds were prescribed 264 percent more often in 2010 than in 2001.
—Men between 20 and 64 years old quadrupled their use of antipsychotics; women of the same age group more than tripled theirs.
Of all the study’s findings, psychiatrist David Muzina said he found the whopping increase in the use of these antipsychotic meds the most surprising—and most alarming.
But just because Americans are swallowing pills marked for specific disorders doesn’t mean they actually suffer from them. The Medco report tells us nothing about the diagnoses that went along with the prescriptions. Many, if not all, of the medications included in the Medco survey are routinely used for off-label purposes, performing functions other than those they originally were designed for.
For instance, antidepressants are now prescribed also for patients with fibromyalgia and anxiety disorders. Similarly, drugs known as “atypical antipsychotics,” such as Seroquel and Abilify, came on the market to treat psychosis but since have been adopted for the treatment of bipolar disorder as well as serving as an add-on drug in antidepressant regimens.
Dr. David Muzina, a psychiatrist who leads the Medco Neuroscience Therapeutic Resource Center, said that of all the study’s findings, he found the whopping increase in the use of these antipsychotic meds the most surprising—and most alarming.
Specifically, what concerns Muzina is their side effects. This class of drugs has been shown to raise blood lipids and significantly increase the risk of type II diabetes. It is strongly recommended that patients taking one of these drugs have, at minimum, a yearly blood workup to monitor glucose levels and lipids. Yet many patients and their physicians don’t comply with these guidelines, said Muzina. And so a “safety gap” opens up for the millions of Americans being dosed with Seroquel and its pharmaceutical siblings.
“My belief is that the report will surprise physicians and make them think whether or not their use is warranted,” he said.
The report provides information based solely on prescriptions being filled, so any theory about why a certain number has gone up or down is just a theory.
For the ADHD medications, such as Adderall and Ritalin, which have soared in popularity among Americans since 2001, the numbers could be misleading.
More boys than girls take these drugs in childhood, but more adult women than men were prescribed them in the last decade. The finding could be understood, said Muzina, in terms of how attention disorders present in girls, who often lack the “hyperactivity” that puts the H in ADHD. They might suffer from an attention disorder, but it’s not as conspicuous as it is in boys, so it may take until adulthood for women with ADHD to recognize the symptoms in themselves.
But this clearly isn’t the whole explanation. These drugs are taken on many American college campuses for their ability to keep students wired and focused around the clock.
“Frankly, the other component is that there’s some popularization of ADHD,” said Muzina, “and in America, we have a proclivity for the fast fix.”
White House Drug Policy Office to join Mothers Against Drunk Driving to Release New Data on Traffic Fatalities; Announce Partnership and Resources to Combat Emerging Threat of Drugged Driving
New Data to Reveal Details of Fatally Injured Drivers Who Tested Positive for Drugs; MADD to Announce Plans to Address Drugged Driving
Washington, D.C. – Gil Kerlikowske, Director of National Drug Control Policy will join Jan Withers,National President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and victims of drugged driving at a news conference to release an analysis of the National Highway and Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). The analysis will reveal demographic details of fatality injured drivers who tested positive for drugs. Additionally, in light of the emerging threat to public safety from drugged driving, MADD will announce plans to address the issues of poly-abuse (both drugs and alcohol) and drugged driving.
WHO:
Gil Kerlikowske
Director, National Drug Control Policy
Jan Withers
MADD National President
Kimberly Earle
Chief Executive Officer, MADD
Stephanie Call
Mother of Drugged Driving Victim
Hollywood Ruch
15-year-old Victim of Drunk and Drugged Driving
WHAT:
News Conference
ONDCP and MADD to announce partnership and release new data and resources to combat drugged driving
WHEN:
Thursday, October 13th, 2011
10:00 a.m. EST
WHERE:
National Press Club
Zenger Room
529 14th Street, NW
13th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20045
Mothers Against Drunk Driving was founded by a mother whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, and it is now the nation’s largest nonprofit working to protect families from drunk driving and underage drinking, while also supporting victims of drunk and drugged driving.
For more information about Mothers Against Drunk Driving, visit www.madd.org.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy seeks to foster healthy individuals and safe communities by effectively leading the Nation’s effort to reduce drug use and its consequences.
For more information about the Office of National Drug Control Policy and it programs visit:
seated in the Michael Jackson death trial. They will decide whether Dr. Conrad Murray is guilty of involuntary manslaughter. He’s accused of administering a fatal dose of a surgical anesthetic to Michael Jackson.
The focus of the trial … How did the King of Pop really die? It’s a question the world’s been asking for over two years. We’ll be covering this trial gavel-to-gavel. With my background in medicine and addiction, I’ll be sharing a point of view that you won’t hear anywhere else.
In my opinion, having a personal physician is a terrible idea for any celebrity because there are systems in place to take care of patients properly. To have a personal physician for an addict or somebody with psychiatric problems is a recipe for very serious trouble.
I don’t know why Dr. Murray felt that it was appropriate to be the sole caretaker of a complicated patient like Michael Jackson. That’s something that should never be done.
I actually feel very sorry for Dr. Murray. I think he got himself into a situation where he was way over his head – into an area that he truly didn’t understand.
Dr. Murray’s attorney Edward Chernoff claims that Dr. Murray did not know what trouble MJ was in when he accepted this job. I have no doubt that’s true, but once he got in there and discovered what he was dealing with, he should have assembled a team. That was his responsibility.
Murray’s attorney also said that Murray wanted to help him get off propofol to sleep.
Propofol is a short-acting barbiturate-like sedative that we use in emergency rooms or ICUs. It’s something I’ve never seen outside of a hospital. It’s not a typical drug of addiction because no one can get access to it.
I want to make something clear. This is not about sleeping. This is about drug withdrawal. Insomnia is a symptom, not a diagnosis. There is no way that Jackson could have been taking what he took the night he died and tolerated that without having had tolerance to those substances.
The combination of drugs and the doses of those drugs and the route of administration would be enough to put a dozen people to sleep for a week.
I could see no evidence that Jackson’s substance use was being dealt with – and there MJ was about to go on a strenuous tour.
I have a lot more to say about this case. Join me weeknights at 9 p.m. ET on HLN as we look deeper into the behaviors involved in the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray.
As part of special series on liars. recovering addicts who remember the deception that accompanied their drinking and drugging lifestyles, came onto the show Wednesday night.
Watch as Dr. Drew is joined by former supermodel Janice Dickinson, actress and model Jennifer Gimenez, and original bassist for “The Black Crowes” Johnny Colt.
The full segment airs at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT tonight on HLN.
To the surprise of no one with the slightest sense of irony, singer Amy Winehouse, who earned a spot on iPods everywhere for saying no, no, no to rehab, died last weekend of an apparent overdose. Earlier this year, two other (less famous) celebrities, alumni of Dr. Drew Pinsky’s “Celebrity Rehab,” also died unsurprisingly from presumed overdoses: Mike Starr and Jeff Conway. Starr, formerly of the band Alice in Chains, had at one point achieved six months clean—an eternity in sobriety; but, then, it’s an insidious thing, this disease. And, lately, so is the response to it.
Over on The Huffington Post, Charles Karel Bouley (“KGO Radio and Syndicated Host, Stand Up, Entertainer, Author, Actor, Dog Walker”—who doesn’t blog for HuffPo?) spends many thousands of words pondering the cruelty of the “general public” who “pass judgment on Winehouse, or any of the other host of celebrities that left too soon because of drugs, alcohol, fast cars or a myriad of other ways to die.” Let’s break that down: We, the general public, are chastised for our—un-cited—judgments of Winehouse and those other celebrities who died in, well, myriad other ways. “Those critics are not artists,” he huffs. How perfectly annoying. It’s bad enough that Bouley cannot produce one example of this supposed mass intolerance of fast cars (?!) and the like, but then he has the gall to be callous toward the “general public”—none of whom, apparently, are artists. Talk about passing judgment. “What we really should be asking,” Bouley declares, “is, why artists?”
Really? Not: Why is it so easy to score drugs? Not: Why do we put addicts in jail for minor possession instead of rehab? Not: Why aren’t we doing anything about a disease that costs the United States alone more than $400 billion a year? No, no, no. We should be asking, Whyartists?—as though artists have a unique monopoly on addiction. According to Bouley, “being an artist hurts,” and he knows: He surrounds himself with “many very, very famous” artists. I don’t surround myself with many very, very famous artists (I live in D.C.), but I do surround myself with addicts. And, it turns out, they are pretty easy to come by in just about every profession. Heck, I can’t walk near Capitol Hill without bumping into a dozen addicted lawyers.
So, for once and for all, let’s give the lie to this silly notion that artists must suffer for their work via drugs and alcohol. Or that artists are so innately tortured that they must use drugs and alcohol to tolerate the injustices of the world (especially if they are rich and very, very famous). Or that creativity is solely derived from this artist-addict round-robin. “If Jim Morrison was sent to a 30-day program with Dr. Drew, would he have lasted, and if so, would he have created the same music?” wonders Bouley—in a wildly discordant epic pop-culture sophistry—as if Morrision’s music were worth losing his life over. Why doesn’t anyone ever wonder if his art—or Janice Joplin’s or Jimi Hendrix’s or Kurt Cobain’s or Heath Ledger’s or John Belushi’s—would have actually become even better with sobriety? Because, for every died-too-young artist, I can name ten got-it-together artists who went on to do even greater things in recovery: Robert Downey Jr., James Hetfield, Johnny Cash, Mickey Rourke, Betty Ford, Stephen King, Rob Lowe, Stevie Nicks, Craig Fergusen, Steven Tyler, Russell Brand, Ewan MacGregor, Robin Williams … I could go on. I bet they are all glad they didn’t die young for their art.
And guess what? Once you get sober—surprise!—pain still exists. You need not plumb the abyss of a heroin addiction to experience soul-sucking distress for the sake of art. Life happens, folks, and it’s not a guaranteed perfect ride. This notion that art must be accompanied by addiction is not just insidious; it’s enabling.
I think Mike Starr knew that; I think he knew his creativity, talent, and motivation would only come back if he went a different way, if he got sober. While Charlie Sheen willingly plays addicted jester to our wicked delight (I myself feasted on the ignobility of Sheen around the water-cooler at work only to feel like scum immediately afterward) and Winehouse dies and will be lionized, Starr did the hard work of attempting to bridge the insurmountable chasm between the way things started and the way they ended up.
Not all artists will, like Amy Winehouse, become enshrined as the young, sad, beautiful victims of art, fame, depression, and drugs—martyrs to their craft, like Bouley would have them. Chris Norris got it right when he wrote in New York Magazine’s Vulture blog: “[A]s Mike Starr has shown, the reality behind this reality narrative is usually a much longer, downward arc, with few twists and turns, and a very predictable ending.” In other words, we who use to excess are all just addicts. Not artist addicts. Not special addicts. Not entitled-to-use addicts.
Indeed, even very, very famous addicts are just plain-old addicts. So let’s stop giving them a creativity pass.
Now that the Casey Anthony case is over, HLN is seeking new news – some scandal to grip television viewers. Enter Amy Winehouse. Tonight at 9 pm on HLN, Dr. Drew, the addiction specialist’s weeknight show dealing with human behavior and driven by current events, will be devoted to the singer-songwriter’s premature death on July 23. He’s taking viewer’s questions so now all can weigh in.
Dr. Drew, also the host of Celebrity Rehab on VH1, has publicly commented on Twitter about Winehouse’s struggles with alcohol and drugs: “SO sad, another lost to addiction. A reminder that this is often a fatal condition. Recovery is possible, but sadly not for Amy Winehouse.” Dr. Drew knows about losing a client. Mike Starr, formerly of Alice in Chains, who appeared on a season of Celebrity Rehab and Sober House, died in March, apparently from a mixture of drugs.
Addiction is a wily condition. For those who don’t believe rehab works Dr. Drew offered insights on CNN with his reactions to Winehouse’s death. The doctor describes her fatal condition and the serious risk of returning to a career prematurely, and how both handlers and the public misunderstand the recovery process. The song “Rehab” reflects what he calls the addict’s “disturbance of thinking,” convinced they don’t need treatment. “Inevitably they relapse,” he explains. “This condition isn’t fixed in 30, 60 or even 90 days… there are no short cuts with opiate addiction. The prognosis is worse than the majority of cancers.”
Many have paid tribute to Winehouse, including Jaan Uhelszki in The Morton Report, tweeting their two cents and offering RIPs, from Moby’s horrified and helpless reaction toRussell Brand’s blog, thoughtful and reflective. Russell knows. He’s been there. Of course, this is all before there’s an official cause of death, but the autopsy led to an inquest with results to be revealed October 26. With Winehouse’s addiction problems so well-documented, this is a cautionary tale that makes Dr. Drew’s frequent admonition, “This disease can kill you” sound less heavy-handed.
The current fifth season of Celebrity Rehab has a curious cast featuring actress Sean Young (Blade Runner), baseball star Dwight Gooden, Michael Lohan (Lindsay’s dad), Amy “Long Island Lolita” Fisher, Steven Adler (Guns ‘N Roses), and a couple representatives of a new category, the reality show celeb. It’s clear how drugs and alcohol derailed careers and wrecked relationships. The process-oriented show and Dr. Drew’s familiarity with celebrity narcissism is intriguing to witness.
Nothing much triggers cool collected Dr. Drew. Though sufficiently detached, he asks the right questions, makes the apropos remark and nails it. Emotions fly wildly on the road to sobriety. But the good doctor attempts to make the process transparent and catches signals keenly—from an inward look to a bullying explosion—noting withdrawal symptoms, dissociation, trauma or another psychological dysfunction. The transformation of someone like actor Tom Sizemore from a sweaty mess to self-aware and on-the-mend shows recovery is possible, if not fragile.
Opinions will fly tonight on HLN at 9 pm, but, no doubt, Dr. Drew will field them with his characteristic aplomb. Tonight is for Amy.
