Tag Archives: Heroin overdose

How well do you know Heroin Drug

How well do you know Heroin Drug: How do I know if I have Heroin Problem?

How well do you know Heroin Drug

How well do you know Heroin Drug? The information about heroin is very important in the journey to heroin addiction recovery and creating awareness is just the beginning

For a couple of days we have been addressing various issues concerning drug abuse and particularly heroin. We noticed that the rate at which this is increasing is worrying and as professionals at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury we will continue giving our contribution to ensure that the prevalence of substance abuse is reduced to manageable levels. In our interaction with clients and patients from time to time, we have noticed that the public are not really informed of the consequences of these drug abuses. And most worrying is that even if they are directly affected, it takes others to notice but the real victim is not even aware that he is addicted to heroin or any other drug. We want to use this forum to further create more awareness of the prevalence of heroin and the question we want to respond to is “how well do you know heroin drug?” to effectively respond to this, we have segmented the discussion in four question of great concern. We hope that this will help you understand better what heroin really is and how you can protect yourself from the scourge. The four questions of concerns include:

  1. How Do I Know if I Have a Heroin Problem?
  2. What is Heroin and how is it Used?
  3. Effects of Heroin Use
  4. Treatment for Heroin and Opiate Addiction

Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is not just the most abused drug but it is also the most rapidly acting of the opiates. These characteristics have put it to be the leading opiate abused in the global opiate market. With the help of the professionals at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center, let us get to business of responding to these concerns.

How well do you know Heroin Drug: How Do I Know if I Have a Heroin Problem?

It is always said that knowledge is power and that luck of it is the basis of many problems we are facing today. Understanding that background, we want to be as informative as possible so that by the end of this article, you will be able to make informed decisions about substance abuse. Heroin Anonymous developed some questions which were tailored into helping individuals be on top of any possibility of heroin addiction. How you respond to the questions below will give a very strong indication about your position with heroin. Like for instance how would you respond to the following?

  • Do you isolate yourself when using heroin? In other wards you are avoiding people when using heroin, does that describe you?
  • Have you ever used more heroin than you planned? If you have records of usage it will be helpful however you can also evaluate this by auditing your spending on heroin. Has it been constant or has it been fluctuating?
  • Has your heroin usage interfered with your job or school? Take stock of how many times you have lied to be sick and stayed off duty or if you have not been meeting your assignment deadlines inconsideration.
  • Do you find yourself concealing your heroin usage from others? Interesting, are you proud of this habit?
  • Are you experiencing financial difficulties due to your heroin usage? You may not realize this if you have more than enough to spend but evaluate from your spending how much is going into heroin account, in other word has it become one of the item you spend on heavily?
  • Has your heroin usage caused problems with your partner/spouse or family? Take a closer look at your present and your past before you got into heroin, are you still faithful in that relationship? How often do you hide certain information from your family? Dig deep in your past and respond honestly.
  • Do you wish you could stop using heroin and find that you are unable to quit? Many times users are very frustrated with their habits and are struggling to quit but because they are deeply hooked they are unable. Does this describe your situation?
  • Have you experienced legal difficulties from your heroin usage and yet you continue to use? Of course heroin is illegal and the authorities will not let you go without being punished. You may have escaped once or twice but will you escape forever?
  • Do you consume the entire amount of heroin you have and then immediately desire to get more? And have you become extravagant all over sudden?
  • Have you failed to cut down or quit heroin entirely? You know this is an illegality and probably you have been making effort of quitting but you keep meeting resistance and challenges. Does this describe you?
  • Do you wish you had never taken that first hit, line, or injection of heroin? In your years of addiction, somewhere along the way have you had any regret however small?

How well do you know Heroin Drug: It is possible to Quit Heroin?

Before we continue with the remaining question, the focus of this article is to bring hope to all heroin addicts and not to condemn them. We started by asking how well do you know heroin drug? And up to that point I want to inform you that if all the answers you are giving are pointing to the wrong direction of heroin addiction, you are on the right track of making the right decision. A decision for health and good life and doctor Akoury and her team of experts are very much ready and willing to help you do through this difficulty. AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center team of experts are only waiting to hear from you primarily to help you in the recovery process. All you need to do is to schedule for an appointment with doctor Dalal Akoury and that which you have not been able to solve alone, will be professionally addressed. As you consider making that good decision, let us continue highlighting the indicators of heroin addiction in their question forms.

  • Have you continued to use heroin even after you experienced an overdose?
  • Do you fear other people will find out about your heroin usage?
  • Are you preoccupied with getting heroin when you do not have it?
  • Do you have to use larger amounts of heroin to get the same high you once experienced?
  • Has anyone ever told you that you may have a problem?
  • Have you ever lied or misled those around you about how much or how often you use heroin?
  • Do you use heroin at work or in the bathroom in public facilities?
  • Have you ever hocked something in order to buy heroin?
  • Are you afraid that if you stop using heroin that you will not be able to function?
  • Do you find yourself doing things that you are ashamed of in order to purchase heroin?
  • Have you ever stolen drugs or money from family or friends in order to buy heroin?

Finally if your answer to any of these 22 questions is “Yes” then you need help. You don’t have to answer all of them yes; just one is enough to indicate the heroin problem. Like I have indicated talking to doctor Akoury will be the starting point and by the end of it your life will change for good leaving you to enjoy life without regrets. The remaining three concerns will be addressed in the next article, so stay on the link and get the best of health information.

How well do you know Heroin Drug: How do I know if I have Heroin Problem?

 

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The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally: How Addicts get hooked up to Heroin

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally is becoming uncontrollable going by the rate at which young people are being hooked up to drugs

Until you get out and see for yourself or listen to people share their experience, you may not know the impact of heroin addiction in your neighborhood. The prevalence of heroin addiction globally is taking a new dimension. Currently heroin and other substance abuse are no longer drugs associated with the city centers but the net is widening even in to the local estates and neighborhoods. In the previous article we doctor Akoury shared with us the story of a young man named Felix and how he was progressively lured into drugs. From a simple experiment Felix was introduced to legal medications like the painkillers and before he knew he was an addict. In this article we are going to further on that discussion by focusing on some of the experiences other people have had an opportunity to witness. There are a lot of recordings that give us a clear picture of the prevalence of heroin addiction globally. Take for example according to recent report “Donna Holaday looks out the window of her city hall office in Newburyport, an affluent coastal city 37 miles north of Boston. Ms. Holaday has been mayor of the town the past four years and was recently reelected. Over that time, she has seen her share of municipal concerns come across her busy desk. But few have been as worrying as the growing use of heroin in her idyllic community.”

Although she knew of the drug’s presence in the city, the report continues, Holaday says that it wasn’t until police reports started surfacing and concerned residents began showing up in her office that she understood the depth of the problem and the emotional anguish it was causing. She continues to narrate that “I had a mother sitting in my office crying, telling me her story about how she pulled her son out of a trailer, just over the border in New Hampshire, and [how] he would have died [if she hadn’t intervened],” she says.

As if that was not enough other local parents also told her about finding needles and syringes in the leafy playgrounds where their children romped. Addicts were seen “shooting up” on the city’s Clipper City Rail Trail, a scenic biking and jogging path. Newburyport Police Marshal Thomas Howard says his department has responded to more than a dozen heroin overdoses in the past months. Without the use of Narcan, an overdose reversal drug, he says the number of deaths in the area “would be skyrocketing.”

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally: The trend of Heroin is affecting even the once drug Free states

Ideally, Newburyport isn’t the kind of town you’d expect to have any heroin footprint at all. It is one of those communities that seem to have everything including; beauty, wealth, a vibrant arts culture, and an enviable location. Straddling the banks of the Merrimack River and its outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, Newburyport has a storied seafaring heritage that is visible at every salt-scented turn.

Its harbor once bustled with clipper ships from around the world. The city’s High Street is a showcase of imposing Federal-style homes that trace their lineage to sea captains and speculators who plied the waters of the West Indies, trading molasses for rum in the 1700s. These same homes, once maintained by black and native American slaves, later became a means of escape as part of the Underground Railroad.

Now this city is trying to end a different kind of slavery. Mr. Pettigrew, of the DEA, lives in Newburyport. As a member of the agency’s regional office, he and his fellow agents track where the drugs flowing into New England are coming from – a trail that usually leads to cartels in Colombia and Mexico and the story continues in our next article

While heroin has always been available in the region, what’s changed recently is the purity of the drugs on the street. Pettigrew notes that the heroin that addicts used to shoot up with was 2 or 3 percent pure. Today, the street purity of the drug can be as high as 80 percent.

That potency helps explain both the drug’s wider appeal and its new danger. Heroin once had to be injected for users to get the high they were looking to achieve, but it is now concentrated enough that they can smoke or snort it to get a similar effect – methods that make heroin easier for people like Felix to use it without feeling like a junkie. The higher purity is also more likely to trigger an overdose for those who do inject it.

Like everything else, you’re trying to sell your product, so [dealers are] trying to pitch it as a more potent drug for you to take and get high off of.

Stronger heroin is only one reason behind the nation’s growing addiction problem. The other – and more prevalent cause, say police and medical experts – is the nation’s pill culture.

Felix’s route to addiction is a familiar one, according to addicts: a progression from alcohol to marijuana to painkillers to heroin. There are variations on that theme: a sports injury and a prescription for opioids that goes on far longer than it should; a peek inside the family medicine cabinet to find a trove of prescription pills – such as Percocet, OxyContin, Vicodin, codeine – that can be used as recreational drugs.

Often the introduction comes through friends who want to share a high they have discovered. Or it happens at a college party where a variety of drugs are being offered.

Finally irrespective of how this scourge begun the common denominator is that, it usually takes the same impulsive route. And once hooked, users look for doctors who will sell them prescription drugs, and when that fails, desperation sets in and the only available option is in the street. The painkiller drugs are often accessible to the street at an average cost. The condition will continue to deteriorate as sources of income gets depleted. When they can no longer finance their habits they turn to the very last resort which is fairly affordable and provide the same or better result than the painkillers. The most accessible in this case is the heroin which is much cheaper compared to other drugs we have mentioned.

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally: How Addicts get hooked up to Heroin

 

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Prevention of Heroin overdose in the Societies

Prevention of Heroin overdose in the Societies: Why Heroin Overdoses Are on the Rise

Prevention of Heroin overdose in the Societies

Prevention of Heroin overdose in the Societies is not just an option but a must do thing if we are to be healthy in the future

We all have a duty to keep our neighborhoods safe from all manner of dangers. There are a lot of dangers ranging from crime, health and social life. All these affect us in their own peculiar way and it is now time for all of us to take responsibilities in dealing with these problems. We cannot weight continue waiting for the authorities to do something. Even though the authorities have a role and a major one for that matter, when these problems strike we the societies are the first recipient of their effects. Let us consider substance abuse for example, while the government will feel the economic pain as a result of this problem, our families, sons and daughters, husbands and wives are the direct victims. It has therefore becomes very necessary that we pool together towards the prevention of heroin overdose in the societies. And when am talking about heroin I am not in any way excluding other drugs, they all impact on our lives negatively and radical solution must be sought for today. To introduce the magnitude of the problem, I am going to share with you a story about one of the drug abuse victim for better understanding why we must take action like yesterday.

A few years ago a young man or do I say boy in his early twenties was working at a sporting goods store in one of the neighborhood suburbs, he was prescribed Vicodin for shoulder pain. Latter on his doctor substituted his medication to morphine and then OxyContin unfortunately by the time this was done; he had developed a severe opiate addiction. He followed his prescription well but when his prescription expired, his cravings continued and he could not hold. As usual he bought for himself more pills from a street dealer for $50 each. He kept on purchasing every time he craves and when he had depleted his savings, the craving did not stop instead in become even worse. He negotiated with is supplier and the supplier offered him a dose of heroin for $10, before he knew he had been completely gotten hooked and addicted to the drugs.

The consequences of this begun to manifest themselves and the first thing was that he lost his job and spent several years in and out of treatment. Years later and desperate for money to support his unhealthy habit, he was arrested trying to steal a boat motor spear parts from his neighbor’s garage. This landed him in jail and the consequences continued he suffered opiate withdrawal for days: curled up in the fetal position due to bone and muscle pain, shaking from fever and chills, wasting his life and wetting and soiling himself with his pee and diarrhea and vomit. His fellow inmates did not take this kindly; they harassed him scathingly for the smell. After serving his jail term and one week into his freedom out of jail, he was not rehabilitated yet. So he borrowed his friend’s car to drive across town and of course his destination was to his old heroin dealer.

As a former client whose money the dealer had missed desperately, he was welcomed back with a dose of heroin at his cost at least to keep him in the list of clients. He injected the usual dose in his bedroom and the worse happen, this time round he came to the end of the road with his addiction and he stopped breathing. The next morning, his father found his lifeless body curled up on the floor. When I began I said that we must not weight for the authorities to come and do something. In this boy story you realize that at the end of it all it is his father who found him. In other words we are the people who are hard hit by this scourge. This story is one among many across the globe. It therefore brings us to the urgent need of ensuring that prevention of heroin overdose in the societies is well entrenched in our lifestyle.

Prevention of Heroin overdose in the Societies: The expert’s opinion

We spoke to the experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury MD and also the founder of the establishment, and she said that it is regrettable that the death toll of heroin addiction has been rising constantly at 40% per year since 2011, overtaking fatalities from HIV in. This is not something to celebrate about she says. We are going to share in our next article some five points you need to know about the impact of heroin overdose in our societies, but in the meantime, you can schedule for an appointment with doctor Akoury for more professional input even as she brings us up to speed with some of the things we can do to help:

Prevention of Heroin overdose in the Societies: What you can do

  • If anyone you know has struggled with opiates, even years ago, get trained and equipped to administer naloxone yourself. Find an overdose prevention program near you.
  • Invite Moms United to End the War on Drugs or Law Enforcement against Prohibition (LEAP) to speak to your civic club, student organization or other group about heroin and safe injection facilities.
  • Learn more about how syringe exchange programs are reducing blood-borne disease transmission, how Naloxone Access and Good Samaritan Laws are saving the lives of those who overdose, and how the national Ban the Box campaign and Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program help drug users stay out of jail and move on with their lives.
  • Tell your friends that heroin overdose deaths can be prevented with safe injection facilities. Start conversations about why it makes sense to provide a safe place to inject heroin.

Finally this is our problem, it affects us and we must individually and collectively take responsibilities for the prevention of heroin overdose in the societies. You can talk to doctor Dalal Akoury for more clarification and treatment recovery programs they offer at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center today and your life and that of your whole society will be transformed thereafter.

Prevention of Heroin overdose in the Societies: Why Heroin Overdoses Are on the Rise

 

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