30 Million Americans On Antidepressants And 21 Other Facts About America's Endless Pharmaceutical Nightmare

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/03/2014
New York Times
Reality

inSha

Submitted by Michael Snyder of End of The American Dream blog,

Has there ever been a nation more hooked on drugs than the United States?  And I am not just talking about illegal drugs – the truth is that the number of Americans addicted to legal drugs is far greater than the number of Americans addicted to illegal drugs.  As you will read about below, more than 30 million Americans are currently on antidepressants and doctors in the U.S. wrote more than 250 million prescriptions for painkillers last year.  Sadly, most people got hooked on these drugs very innocently.  They trusted that their doctors would never prescribe something for them that would be harmful, and they trusted that the federal government would never approve any drugs that were not safe.  And once the drug companies get you hooked, they often have you for life.  

You see, the reality of the matter is that some of these “legal drugs” are actually some of the most addictive substances on the entire planet.  And when they start raising the prices on those drugs, there isn’t much that the addicts can do about it.  It is a brutally efficient business model, and the pharmaceutical industry guards their territory fiercely.  Very powerful people will often do some really crazy things when there are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake.  The following are 22 facts about America’s endless pharmaceutical nightmare that everyone should know…

#1 According to the New York Times, more than 30 million Americans are currently taking antidepressants.
#2 The rate of antidepressant use among middle aged women is far higher than for the population as a whole.  At this point, one out of every four women in their 40s and 50s is taking an antidepressant medication.
#3 Americans account for about five percent of the global population, but we buy more than 50 percent of the pharmaceutical drugs.
#4 Americans also consume a whopping 80 percent of all prescription painkillers.
#5 It is hard to believe, but doctors in the United States write 259 million prescriptions for painkillers each year.  Prescription painkillers are some of the most addictive legal drugs, and our doctors are serving as enablers for millions up0n millions of Americans that find themselves hooked on drugs that they cannot kick.
#6 Overall, pharmaceutical drug use in America is at an all-time high.  According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
#7 According to the CDC, approximately 9 out of every 10 Americans that are at least 60 years old say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.
#8 In 2010, the average teen in the United States was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs.  Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.
#9 A very disturbing Government Accountability Office report found that approximately one-third of all foster children in the United States are on at least one psychiatric drug.
#10 An astounding 95 percent of the “experimental medicines” that the pharmaceutical industry produces are found not to be safe and are never approved.  Of the remaining 5 percent that are approved, we often do not find out that they are deadly to us until decades later.
#11 One study discovered that mothers that took antidepressants during pregnancy were four times more likely to have a baby that developed an autism spectrum disorder.
#12 It has been estimated that prescription drugs kill approximately 200,000 people in the United States every single year.
#13 An American dies from an unintentional prescription drug overdose every 19 minutes.  According to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, accidental prescription drug overdose is “the leading cause of acute preventable death for Americans”.
#14 In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.
#15 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
#16 The number of prescription drug overdose deaths in the United States is five times higher than it was back in 1980.
#17 A survey conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that more than 15 percent of all U.S. high school seniors abuse prescription drugs.
#18 More than 26 million women over the age of 25 say that they are “using prescription medications for unintended uses“.
#19 If all of these antidepressants are helping, then why are more Americans killing themselves?  The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 increased by nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2010.  The number of Americans that die by suicide is now greater than the number of Americans that die as a result of car accidents every year.
#20 Antidepressant use has been linked to mass shootings in America over and over and over again, and yet the mainstream media is eerily quiet about this. Is it because they don’t want to threaten one of their greatest sources of advertising revenue?
#21 The amount of money that the pharmaceutical industry is raking in is astronomical.  It has been reported that Americans spent more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs during 2013.

If many of these drugs were not so addictive, the pharmaceutical companies would make a lot less money.  And pharmaceutical drug addicts often don’t fit the profile of what we think a “drug addict” would look like.  For example, CNN shared the story of a 55-year-old grandmother named Cynthia Scudo that become addicted to prescription painkillers…

For Scudo, her addiction began — as they all do — innocently enough.

She sought relief from hip pain, possibly caused by scarring from cesarean sections she had delivering several of her children.

Her then-husband recommended a physician.

“There was no physical therapy offered,” she said of the doctor’s visit. “The first reaction was, let’s give you some drugs.”

He put her on OxyContin.

By the second week, she was physically addicted.

She was popping so much of the painkiller and other drugs such as anti-anxiety Valium that they equated to a dosage for three men.

There is lots and lots of money to be made from addiction.  In fact, if the U.S. health care system was a totally separate nation it would actually be the 6th largest economy on the entire globe.  We are talking about piles of money larger than most people would ever dare to imagine.

And with so much money floating around, it is quite easy for the pharmaceutical industry to buy the cooperation of our politicians and of the media.

Some time when you are watching television in the evening, consciously take note of how often a pharmaceutical commercial comes on.

It has gotten to the point where we are literally being inundated with these ads.

They are already making hundreds of billions of dollars, and they think that there is room for even more growth.

What’s So Bad About Casual Drug Use?

Most people who try cocaine don't go on to become addicts
By Nick Gillespie TIME

So Representative Trey Radel, the Republican from Florida, a self-styled “conservative voice” in Congress, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of cocaine possession. And Toronto’s city council has stripped Mayor Rob Ford of much of his power after it came out that he had smoked crack (never mind that Ford’s well-known drunken antics were not cause for such censure).

Rather than arguing whether such figures are hypocrites (Radel voted in favor of mandatory drug testing for food-stamp beneficiaries) or debating how they should attempt damage control (he’s also pledged to enter a substance-abuse program after paying a fine and receiving a year’s probation), let’s ask a more basic question: What’s so scandalous about casual drug use?

Yes, some substances are illegal (though as the case of marijuana shows, this status is subject to change). But absent other indicators of dangerous and antisocial behavior — like driving while intoxicated — why should snorting coke be treated any differently than, say, drinking a beer?

Prohibitionists typically deny the very possibility of responsible or voluntary use of currently illegal substances. They argue that drugs such as coke, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamine and even marijuana are verboten precisely because they simply can’t be used casually. Any use either already constitutes abuse or quickly leads to it. “Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal,” former drug czar William Bennett and former Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano wrote in a 2011 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “they are illegal because they are dangerous.”

Nearly 50% of people have tried an illegal drug at least once, yet most don’t repeat the experience. With cocaine, most who have tried it not only don’t go on to became addicts under even the most expansive possible definition of the term, they don’t even go on to become regular users.

According to the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 14.5% of Americans ages 12 and older have tried cocaine at least once, but just 1.8% report using the drug recreationally in the past year. And just 0.6% have used it in the past 30 days, which would seem to be the minimal definition of a casual user.

The same pattern is true for heroin, which is typically talked about as magically addictive. Fear of the drug is surely one of the reasons why just 1.8% of Americans have ever tried it at all. But only 0.3% report using it in the past year and just 0.1% in the past month. That pattern simply shouldn’t be possible if these drugs were as addictive as commonly thought.

In the early 1970s, researcher Lee N. Robins led a study commissioned by the Department of Defense that followed tens of thousands of Vietnam War veterans as they returned to the U.S. Use of narcotics and heroin was rampant among soldiers stationed in Southeast Asia, with as many 20% showing signs of addiction. Yet during the first year back, “only 5% of those who had been addicted in Vietnam were addicted in the U.S.” and “at three years, only 12% of those addicted in Vietnam had been addicted at any time in the three years since return, and for those readdicted, the addiction had usually been very brief.” It wasn’t for lack of access to junk, either: half of the returning addicts said they’d tried heroin at least once since arriving back home.

As my Reason colleague Jacob Sullum has documented, such take-it-or-leave-it findings are common in drug research. In his 2004 book Saying Yes and other places, he’s detailed work in which researchers find a surprising range among heroin users, including a study that concluded, “It seems possible for young people from a number of different backgrounds, family patterns and educational abilities to use heroin occasionally without becoming addicted.”

It’s also true that regular drug users can often function quite well. Sigmund Freud used cocaine habitually for years, and his first major scientific publication was about the wonders of the drug (he eventually forsook it). Another pioneering late 19th and early 20th century man of medicine, William Halsted, was dependent on cocaine and morphine during an illustrious career that revolutionized and modernized surgical techniques.

None of this is a brief for snorting cocaine, shooting heroin or smoking marijuana (a substance that 58% of Americans think should be legal for recreational use) any more than it is a plea for drinking single-malt whiskey or pinot noir.

But in an age in which we are expected to use legal drugs (like beer) and prescription medications (Adderall) responsibly, it’s time to extend that same notion to currently illegal substances whose effects and properties are widely misunderstood. Indeed, the effects of coke, heroin and the rest are a mystery partly because their outlaw status makes it difficult both to research them and have honest discussions about them.

Radel has announced that he’ll be taking a leave of absence from Congress while he enters rehab. Perhaps he does need to sober up — that’s really for him and his family to decide — but it’s far from clear that his problem is particular to cocaine or illegal drugs. Indeed, in announcing his plans, he didn’t blame cocaine for his troubles but “the disease of alcoholism,” which he says led him to make really bad decisions. And alcohol, after all, is perfectly legal.

When Big Pharma Writes the Laws

Move Over ALEC!

by MARTHA ROSENBERG

Just like ALEC, Big Pharma is doing the job of elected officials by writing legislation-ready bills for no charge, says the New York Times.  The new bills seek to prevent health insurers from raising co-pay amounts to a price where patients are unable or unwilling to buy them, especially with expensive drugs. When co-pays rise too high, many people engage in what Pharma calls “prescription abandonment”–leaving the prescription at the pharmacy “altar” or not refilling future prescriptions.

Pharma is losing so much money from rising co-pays and prescription abandonment, it has launched cagey, public service announcement-sounding campaigns about “patients not taking the drugs they need,” as if it is a health and not revenue issue. Pharma has even instituted arrangements with some pharmacies to send visiting nurses to patients’ homes to ensure “compliance,” Big Brother overtones notwithstanding.

Prescription abandonment is an especially thorny issue for Pharma when the drugs are taken on faith, to reduce patients’ “risks” and patients do not necessarily feel them working. It is also a thorny issue when studies suggest the drugs being abandoned may not be necessary to begin with or working.

One such expensive placebo is the drug known by the brand name Risperdal. The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $717 million on the drug to treat posttraumatic stress disorder in Afghanistan and Iraq troops with PTSD over nine years, only to discover it worked no better than a sugar pill! Veterans Affairs doctors wrote more than 5 million prescriptions from 2000 through June 2010 for naught, says a 2011 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Last month, Johnson & Johnson also agreed to pay $1.2 billion in fines for minimizing or concealing Risperdal’s  dangers. Many say unless a drug company’s chief officers go to prison or the company is banned from sales to Medicare and other government programs, penalties are a joke. Wall Street did not punish J&J stock after the Risperdal settlement and actually rewarded Abbott this week after a $1.6 billion settlement for mismarketing the seizure drug Depakote! Hello?

Nor did the JAMA revelations about Risperdal dry up government sales. Less than two weeks after the study was published, the VA awarded a contract for more than 200,000 bottles of generic risperidone, said published reports, containing more than $20 million pills.

Of course, people-aren’t-taking-their-drugs is not Pharma’s only faux PSA campaign. Big bucks are also going into a campaign to prevent patients “abusing” prescription drugs, as  if Pharma billions  in marketing

While no one wants sick people to go without their drugs, some say the Pharma-concocted bills are designed to change the debate over the cost of exorbitant drugs to coverage issues over who pays for them–thus giving “the drug companies a free ride to charge as much as they want.” Pharma is even using patient front groups to whip up a contrived demand for expensive drugs, some charge.

Patients may seem to benefit from the proposed co-pay legislation but health care costs and taxes actually skyrocket as Pharma tries to pass along the cost of expensive brand name drugs that may not even be necessary and are often less effective than cheaper drugs. Some don’t work at all.

An example of how Pharma is trying to play the co-pay card for its revenue stream is seen in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, called “Out-of-Pocket Medication Costs and Use of Medications and Health Care Services Among Children With Asthma.” Increased co-pay is resulting in less use of the asthma “controller medications” say the authors, who have links to Pfizer, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, three large drug companies. Asthma controller medications are drugs added on top of  rescue inhalers or inhaled corticosteroids like Advair, Singulair, Symbicort, and Accolate.  But data published by Medco, the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit manager, says the controller drugs reduce neither trips to the ER or hospitalizations when taken by a large amount of patients. Worse–some reports say the controller asthma medications actually make asthma worse.

Do we really need laws written by Pharma to help “buy” drugs that may be worthless or even make us worse?

Is The Food We Eat Killing Us?

May 10, 2012

By Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse

Are we digging our own graves with our teeth?  Is the food that we eat every day slowly killing us?  When I was growing up, I just assumed that everything in the grocery store was perfectly safe and perfectly healthy.  I just assumed that the government and the big corporations were watching out for us and that they would never allow something harmful to be sold in the stores.

Today, the average American diet is extremely unhealthy.  Most of the foods that we all love to eat are absolutely packed with things that will damage our health.  Many of the ingredients that make our foods “taste good” such as fat, salt and sugar can be extremely damaging in large amounts.  On top of that, most processed foods are absolutely loaded with chemicals and preservatives.  The next time you go to the grocery store, just start turning over packages and read the “ingredients” that are being put into our food.  If you have never done this before, you will be absolutely amazed.  In many of our most common foods there are “ingredients” that I cannot even pronounce.  Sadly, most Americans have no idea that eating a steady diet of these processed foods will likely leave them massively overweight, very sick and much closer to death.

Eating healthy takes more time, more effort and more money than eating poorly does. (you can find cheap organic foods at close-out stores--jef)

Unfortunately, most Americans are content to chow down on foods that are quick to make and that taste good.

In particular, Americans are absolutely addicted to foods that are loaded with sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

When you start looking at food product labels, you will find that either sugar or high fructose corn syrup is in almost everything.

For example, I was absolutely amazed when I learned that most bread sold in our grocery stores contains high fructose corn syrup.

Why in the world would they need to put that into our bread?

Today, Americans are consuming far more sugar and high fructose corn syrup than ever before, and this has many health professionals very alarmed.  The following is an excerpt from an article on the website of the Mayo Clinic….

Some research studies have linked consumption of large amounts of any type of added sugar — not just high-fructose corn syrup — to such health problems as weight gain, dental cavities, poor nutrition, and increased triglyceride levels, which can boost your heart attack risk.

But it is not just sweeteners that are a concern.

There are great concerns about much of the meat that we eat as well.

Today, we grow animals much larger than we used to, but it comes at a price.

For example, we pump our cows full of growth hormones and they stand around in piles of their own manure until it is time for them to die.

If many Americans were aware of where the “cheap beef” in their grocery stores really comes from they might just change their eating habits.

Another dramatic change that has happened to our food supply in recent decades has been the rise of genetically modified crops.

In this area, there has been nothing short of a revolution.

In 1996, only about 2% of all soybeans in the United States were genetically modified. 

Today, about 90% of all soybeans in the United States are genetically modified.

At this point, approximately 70% of all processed foods in our grocery stores contain at least one ingredient that has been genetically modified.

This is one reason why so many Americans have shifted to an organic diet.  Nobody really knows what the long-term health effects of eating all of this genetically-modified food will be on all of us.

But there are some things that we do know.

For example, if you drink large amounts of soda every day you are going to gain weight and you are likely to damage your health.

Sadly, even though we know this, the average American still consumes over 600 12-ounce servings of soda per year.

Is it any wonder that we have an obesity epidemic in America?

As I wrote about the other day, approximately 36 percent of all Americans are obese.

In fact, the United States has a higher percentage of obese people than any other major industrialized nation does.

All of this obesity helps to explain the dramatic rise that we have seen in diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes in recent years.

Did you know that people living in the United States are three times more likely to have diabetes than people living in the United Kingdom?

It is not a mystery why this is happening. It is because of our unhealthy diets. The food we eat is killing us. We are a nation that is becoming a little less healthy every single day, and this is causing healthcare costs to completely spiral out of control.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980.  Today they account for approximately 16.3%. That is an incredible rise. And health care costs have been rising much faster than the overall rate of inflation.For example, health insurance premiums have risen three times faster than wages have in the United States over the past decade.

As Americans get sicker, health care will continue to be a “growth industry”. When we all get sick, what do the doctors do? They put us all on prescription drugs.

According to the CDC, the percentage of Americans that report that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last 30 days has risen to almost 50 percent.

In fact, 31 percent of Americans say that they have taken at least two prescription drugs within the last 30 days and 11 percent have taken at least five prescription drugs within the last 30 days.

But what happens when you take prescription drugs? Most of them have nasty little side effects that cause even more health problems. There is something to be said for going back to a much more natural approach to health.  For example, a recent study found that Amish children have very low levels of asthma and allergies.  The following is from a recent Reuters article….

Amish children raised on rural farms in northern Indiana suffer from asthma and allergies less often even than Swiss farm kids, a group known to be relatively free from allergies, according to a new study.

“The rates are very, very low,” said Dr. Mark Holbreich, the study’s lead author. “So there’s something that we feel is even more protective in the Amish” than in European farming communities.

What it is about growing up on farms — and Amish farms in particular — that seems to prevent allergies remains unclear.

Could the Amish teach the rest of us a thing or two about staying healthy?
That is something to think about.

Another aspect of all this is the packaging that our food comes in.

Chemicals from the packaging in which our food comes can often get into our food and have serious health effects as an article by Emily Barrett recently described….

Increasingly, evidence shows that the plastics and wrappers used for packaging can inadvertently leach unwanted chemicals into food. Several recent studies found high levels of bisphenol A – an environmental chemical that can disrupt hormonal processes – in canned foods and in packaged foods for people and pets.

Now, another study suggests that the problems go far beyond just one culprit or one health effect. Among the many toxic chemicals that can migrate from packaging into food are the endocrine disrupting phthalates and organotins and the carcinogen benzophenone. These compounds are heavily used in food packaging and have known health effects, yet are not routinely tested or regulated in food, according to the paper’s author Jane Muncke.*

Although some regulations exist to guarantee safe food packaging, the current system does not address concerns posed by endocrine disrupting chemicals, Muncke explains.* The associated health effects of exposure to hormone altering compounds are many and varied, including immune disfunction, metabolic disorders (diabetes, thyroid) and reproductive problems.

But our story is still not over.

After we are done with our food we throw the packaging in the garbage and most Americans never even think about where it eventually ends up.

Unfortunately, much of the garbage ends up out in the ocean.

In the Pacific Ocean today, there is a toxic stew of plastic and garbage about twice the size of the continental United States that is known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch“.

According to a BBC report, there are now 100 times more small plastic fragments in the northeast Pacific Ocean than 40 years ago.

Most of us never even stop and think about how the food we eat is destroying our bodies and the world around us.

Most of us just go through our daily lives assuming that somehow everything is going to be okay. But the truth is that our food is causing major problems.

Sadly, with each passing year the federal government and the big corporations get even more control over our system of food distribution.

Hopefully more Americans will wake up and will start rejecting the “food” that the system wants to cram down our throats.

We all need to start making better choices. Growing a garden, eating organic foods and supporting local farmers are some good places to start.

Some wars are just not ever meant to be won...

There's only money in it if it lasts and lasts.

That's how they fill privatized prisons with non-violent offenders...make that money!

And banks like Wells Fargo can launder money for drug cartels...make that money!

It's how the CIA is able to fund the covert shit we'll never know about...make that money!

It's why illegal drugs--which kill fewer people per year than even FOOD does--will never be legalized--not even marijuana, even though it is actually beneficial to your health: it prevents/treats cancer by shrinking tumors (Google it...or look down the right side of this blog in the word collage and click on "cannabis" for a list of several articles from legitimate medical authorities touting all the medical benefits of cannabis), it's a very potent anti-oxidant, it relieves pain, nausea, treats glaucoma, eases chemotherapy symptoms. 


Legal drugs like alcohol (75,000 US deaths, 2.5 million world wide deaths each year) and tobacco ( 443,000 US deaths, 6 million world wide deaths per year) and prescription drugs (100,000 to 200,000 US deaths per year) will continue to remain legal and earn their "pushers" billions of dollars. Medical malpractice (which includes incorrectly prescribing drugs) kills 1,000,000 people per year in the US and the food we eat kills: 30,000 people from obesity each year; 72,000 from diabetes each year; 600,000 from heart disease each year. The total number from those evil illegal drugs on which we wage war is 17,000 US deaths each year. And the number of deaths per year attributed to marijuana has been 0 for half a century. 


Is this war on drugs--which itself costs law enforcement billions of dollars and the US and Mexico over 1 million deaths per year--really in our best interests? As with every tragic criminal endeavor, if you follow the money, you will reveal what really motivates such a purposefully futile endeavor as the drug war fail. The failure of prohibition has destroyed hundreds of millions of more lives than it has or will ever save. 


The US political system has been broken for over a century. Our once democratic republic is nothing more than a fascist oligarchy in which the aristocracy (top 1%) chooses its own members--none of whom have any capability to govern--from whom we think we pick those who pretend to represent our (the 99%) interests, when the only interests they preserve are their own. The robber barons are more devious and stronger and richer than ever, and impose upon us a fake morality based on nothing and tell us that in the land of the free, we are not free to make our own decisions regarding our health and well-being, so that when we get caught stepping out of their arbitrarily drawn lines, we'll end up in their privatized prison system, where we lose what remained of our constitutional rights but still remain a source of profit for them.


Corruption reigns supreme in every single layer/level of government, from local school boards and neighborhood associations to the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government. It's disgusting and pitiful. And we the people are now inmates in a police state, subject to: indefinite detention without a trial; surrender of assets and property; torture; and execution if we wind up on the radar of the US Gestapo--the FBI, DHS, NSA, TSA, DEA and any other "acronymed" branch of the military enforcing the sinister will of the police state.

Placebos and Distraction

New Study Shows How to Boost the Power of Pain Relief, Without Drugs

ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2012) — Placebos reduce pain by creating an expectation of relief. Distraction -- say, doing a puzzle -- relieves it by keeping the brain busy. But do they use the same brain processes? Neuromaging suggests they do. When applying a placebo, scientists see activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. That's the part of the brain that controls high-level cognitive functions like working memory and attention -- which is what you use to do that distracting puzzle.

Now a new study challenges the theory that the placebo effect is a high-level cognitive function. The authors -- Jason T. Buhle, Bradford L. Stevens, and Jonathan J. Friedman of Columbia University and Tor D. Wager of the University of Colorado Boulder -- reduced pain in two ways -- either by giving them a placebo, or a difficult memory task. lacebo. But when they put the two together, "the level of pain reduction that people experienced added up. There was no interference between them," says Buhle. "That suggests they rely on separate mechanisms." The findings, published inPsychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, could help clinicians maximize pain relief without drugs.

In the study, 33 participants came in for three separate sessions. In the first, experimenters applied heat to the skin with a little metal plate and calibrated each individual's pain perceptions. In the second session, some of the people applied an ordinary skin cream they were told was a powerful but safe analgesic. The others put on what they were told was a regular hand cream. In the placebo-only trials, participants stared at a cross on the screen and rated the pain of numerous applications of heat -- the same level, though they were told it varied. For other trials they performed a tough memory task -- distraction and placebo simultaneously. For the third session, those who'd had the plain cream got the "analgesic" and vice versa. The procedure was the same.

The results: With either the memory task or the placebo alone, participants felt less pain than during the trials when they just stared at the cross. Together, the two effects added up; they didn't interact or interfere with each other. The data suggest that the placebo effect does not require executive attention or working memory.

So what about that neuroimaging? "Neuroimaging is great," says Buhle, "but because each brain region does many things, when you see activation in a particular area, you don't know what cognitive process is driving it." This study tested the theory about how placebos work with direct behavioral observation.

The findings are promising for pain relief. Clinicians use both placebos and distraction -- for instance, virtual reality in burn units. But they weren't sure if one might diminish the other's efficacy. "This study shows you can use them together," says Buhle, "and get the maximum bang for your buck without medications."

Journal Reference:Jason T. Buhle, Bradford L. Stevens, and Jonathan J. Friedman and Tor D. Wager. Distraction and Placebo: Two Separate Routes to Pain Control. Psychological Science, 2012

The 10 Most Dangerous Meds Driving America's Pill Crisis

More Americans now die from prescription pills than car accidents. The nation's response to the trend will define an era, but corporate influence threatens reform. 

By Kevin Gray, The Fix
Posted on December 26, 2011

For the first time in nearly a century, automobile accidents are no longer the nation’s leading cause of accidental deaths, according to a major report released Tuesday by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The new number one killer is drugs—not smack, crystal meth or any other stepped-on menace sold in urban alleyways or trailer parks—but bright, shiny pills prescribed by doctors, approved by the government, manufactured by pharmaceutical companies and sold to the consumer as “medicine.”

Yet of the billions of legit pills Americans pop every year for medical conditions serious and otherwise, the vast majority of lives are claimed by only a select few classes—painkillers, sedatives and stimulants—that all share a common characteristic: they promote abuse, dependence and addiction.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg of the prescription drug abuse problem,” says Dr. Margaret Warner, the federal report’s lead author. “The take-home here is, this should be a wake-up call.” Some 41,000 Americans died from what the report refers to as “poisonings” in 2008, compared with 38,000 traffic deaths. That tally marks a 90 percent increase in poisonings and a 15 percent decrease in car accidents since 1999.

Nearly nine out of ten of those poisonings were caused by prescription drug overdoses, with the chief culprit being opiate-based pain relievers such as Vicodin (hydrocodone), OxyContin and Percocet (oxycodone), codeine, morphine—and let’s not forget Actiq (fentanyl), the infamous berry-flavored lollipop that is 100 times stronger than morphine and—like most opiate analgesics—so overprescribed that only about 10% of its sales come from its original indication to treat cancer pain.

These legal opiates accounted for 40 percent, or 15,000, of the fatalities, up from 25 percent, or 4,000, in 1999. Deaths by painkiller now outpace the combined nationwide number of deaths by cocaine (5,100) and heroin (3,000); these fatal overdoses often involve mixing painkillers with other prescription drugs—for example, Klonopin, Xanax, Valium or another benzodiazepines, which are the second most lethal class.

Other report findings: Three quarters of the poisoning are unintentional—likely the result of overdoses rather than drug interactions or allergic reactions—and some 13 percent are suicides. The five states with the highest oxy-type drug death rates (per 100,000 of the population) were New Mexico (30.8), West Virginia (27.6), Alaska (24.2), Nevada (21.0), and Utah (20.8).The most likely to die: white men, American Indians and Native Alaskans, usually between the ages of 45 to 54.

Warner’s death report is but the latest in a disturbing accumulation of evidence, ranging from scientific surveys to celebrity deaths, that underscore what we already know about our painkiller nation: pill mills and doctor shoppers are not just creating a land of bathroom-cabinet addicts—their bodies are packing morgues.

With our surging “oxy addiction” showing no signs of letting up, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this year officially named it an “epidemic.” President Obama has repeatedly invoked prescription drug abuse as the nation’s leading drug problem responsible not only for a rising number of overdoses and deaths but also ratcheting up the incidence of break-ins and burglaries of pharmacies.

Warner and her colleagues at the agency, which is overseen by the CDC, are at pains to draw comparisons between oxy-type drug deaths and those from auto accidents, because they hope that the same comprehensive approach that helped cut traffic deaths in half during the previous decade can save just as many lives on the drug front. Auto fatalities fell following a concerted government focus on national highway safety, resulting in car safety improvements as well as a wide range of regulatory, legal, and public health measures. Seat belt laws were enforced; drunk driving laws became stricter. The fact that alcohol—yet another legal intoxicant—is responsible for close to 40% of all traffic fatalities indicates how difficult it is to apply policy to substance abuse and get significant results. Still, drunk driving is playing a smaller and smaller role in automobile fatalities, falling by close to 40% since 1982.

You need to look at policy, laws, individual behavior, community behavior and health care provider behavior,” says Dr. Chris Jones, a consulting pharmacist with the CDC. One of the most innovative interventions includes building a database on patients who abuse painkillers and identifying doctors who overprescribe (or do so without examining the patient or his medical history). So far, five states have adopted specific pill-mill laws to flush out such doctors. “We’re looking at these laws to evaluate them and for guidance on policy,” says Jones.

That includes sharing information from state medical licensing boards and pharmacy licensing boards to monitor prescribers and set thresholds for how many pills are hitting the street and why.

The Drug Enforcement Administration launched an annual National Prescription Take-Back Event; the third drug dump, in October, collected 188 tons of old pills nationwide. The agency also operates 26 Tactical Diversion Squads—agents specializing in identifying wholesale traffickers and suppliers of black-market pharmaceuticals.

Some 48 states have adopted prescription monitoring programs (PMPs), which typically encourage (rather than require) doctors to record the data of every controlled drug prescribed, but only 37 are currently operational.  In 2011, Florida implemented its PMP after its Tea Party governor reversed his controversial opposition to the surveillance tool, and the Sunshine State has already seen an exodus of pill mills to Georgia, which still has no PMP.

These federal and state campaigns come not a moment too soon, either. Painkillers have become the most common drug taken by adults between the ages of 20 to 59. The trends in sales, deaths and abuse treatment admissions for oxy and the like have all risen fourfold or more since 1999, according to a new state-by-state study. In 2009, for the first time, emergency-room visits resulting from prescription drug ODs topped 1 million, with some 343,000 due to opiate analgesics like oxy, 363,000 due to benzodiazepines and other sedatives, and 22,000 due to stimulants. (For a ranking of the top 10 drugs whose use or abuse led to overdose deaths or survival in ER visits in 2009, see the list at the end of the article.)

In 2010, enough prescription painkillers were sold nationwide to keep every American medicated around the clock for an entire month. Some 12 million Americans admitted that they were using painkillers without a prescription, and at least 14% of these nonmedical users met the criteria for abuse or dependence. In one recent survey, more than 5 million Americans reported using them to get high—in a single month period. The majority of those people say they obtained (or stole) them from friends or their family.

Jones does see one bright spot in the otherwise grim report. Methadone, which is used as a pain reliever as well as to treat opioid dependency, had been on the uptick for nearly a decade—from about 800 deaths in 1999 to about 5,500 in 2007. But for reasons not yet clear, that number dropped by remarkable 600 deaths in 2008. “For  many years it had been the most common opioid in overdose deaths,” says Jones. “We don’t know if it’s just that people have shifted to these other drugs of what. But it’s promising. We’ve have to wait and see what we find when we look at  2009.”

In terms of the big picture, however, the fact that prescription drugs have overtaken automobiles as the nation’s leading cause of accidental deaths marks a deeper societal transformation. One of the most defining developments in twentieth-century America was motorization; as more people bought more cars and drove more miles, more accidents, injuries and deaths were the inevitable result until government intervention bent the curve. 

The 21st century is shaping up to be about, among other things, the pharmaceuticalization of America, as lifelong prescription drug use starting in early childhood becomes the norm.

How will pill popping transform our lives? Certain things are predictable: The drug industry will develop and sell more and more chemicals targeted at the brain, which remains medical science’s “black box”; that will result in treatments to enhance the performance of mood, cognition, attention, memory and other mental functions that will have become, in due course, “medical conditions.” Any pill that promises to make you smarter or happier invites abuse, and some will be as addictive as Oxy or the “morphine popsicle.” But with the enforcement of effective policies—the seat belts and DUI laws of pharmaceuticalization—the drug industry’s off-label marketing and the medical profession’s overprescribing could be dramatically curtailed.

Given the current state of corporate influence over politics, these reforms are anything but predictable. What's at stake is nothing less than the nation’s expanding medicine cabinet doubling as its morgue.

The Top 10 Most Dangerous Rx Drugs in America
This list of brand name and generic drugs was compiled from the Drug Abuse Warning Network's (DAWN's) database of emergency room visits in 2009, including drug poisonings that lead to both deaths and survivals.

1. Xanax (alprazolam) 112,552 (benzodiazepine class)
2. OxyContin (and other oxycodone drugs) 105,214 (opiate class) 
3. Vicodin (and other hydrocodone drugs) 86,258 (opiate class)
4. Methadone 63,031 (opiate class)
5. Klonopin (clonazepam) 57,633 (benzodiazepine class)
6. Ativan (lorazepam) 36,582 (benzodiazepine class)
7. Morphine drugs 31,731 (opiate class)
8. Seroquel (quetiapine) 29,436 (antipsychotic class)
9. Ambien (zolpidem) 29,127 (sedative class)
10. Valium (diazepam) 25,150 (benzodiazepine)

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Big City Gang Bang Productions - Psychopathology 

Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S., data show

Fueling the surge are prescription pain and anxiety drugs that are potent, highly addictive and especially dangerous when combined with one another or with other drugs or alcohol
By Lisa Girion, Scott Glover and Doug Smith, Los Angeles Times



Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found.

Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes. By contrast, traffic accidents have been dropping for decades because of huge investments in auto safety.

Public health experts have used the comparison to draw attention to the nation's growing prescription drug problem, which they characterize as an epidemic. This is the first time that drugs have accounted for more fatalities than traffic accidents since the government started tracking drug-induced deaths in 1979.

Fueling the surge in deaths are prescription pain and anxiety drugs that are potent, highly addictive and especially dangerous when combined with one another or with other drugs or alcohol. Among the most commonly abused are OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and Soma. One relative newcomer to the scene is Fentanyl, a painkiller that comes in the form of patches and lollipops and is 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Such drugs now cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.

"The problem is right here under our noses in our medicine cabinets," said Laz Salinas, a sheriff's commander in Santa Barbara, which has seen a dramatic rise in prescription drug deaths in recent years.

Overdose victims range in age and circumstance from teenagers who pop pills to get a heroin-like high to middle-aged working men and women who take medications prescribed for strained backs and bum knees and become addicted.

A review of hundreds of autopsy reports in Southern California reveals one tragic demise after another: A 19-year-old Army recruit, who had just passed his military physical, took a handful of Xanax and painkillers while partying with friends. A groom, anxious over his upcoming wedding, overdosed on a cocktail of prescription drugs. A teenage honors student overdosed on painkillers her father left in his medicine cabinet from a surgery years earlier. A toddler was orphaned after both parents overdosed on prescription drugs months apart. A grandmother suffering from chronic back pain apparently forgot she'd already taken her daily regimen of pills and ended up double dosing.

Many died after failed attempts at rehab — or after using one too many times while contemplating quitting. That's apparently what happened to a San Diego woman found dead with a Fentanyl patch on her body, one of five she'd applied in the 24 hours before her death. Next to her on the couch was a notebook with information about rehab.

The seeds of the problem were planted more than a decade ago by well-meaning efforts by doctors to mitigate suffering, as well as aggressive sales campaigns by pharmaceutical manufacturers. In hindsight, the liberalized prescription of pain drugs "may in fact be the cause of the epidemic we're now facing," said Linda Rosenstock, dean of the UCLA School of Public Health.

In some ways, prescription drugs are more dangerous than illicit ones because users don't have their guard up, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Steve Opferman, head of a county task force on prescription drug-related crimes. "People feel they are safer with prescription drugs because you get them from a pharmacy and they are prescribed by a doctor," Opferman said. "Younger people believe they are safer because they see their parents taking them. It doesn't have the same stigma as using street narcotics."

Lori Smith said she believes that's what her son might have been thinking the night he died six months shy of his 16th birthday. Nolan Smith, of Aliso Viejo, loved to surf, sail and fish with his brother and father. He suffered from migraines and anxiety but showed no signs of drug abuse, his mother said.

The night before he died in January 2009, Nolan called his mother at work, asking for a ride to the girls basketball game at Aliso Niguel High School. Lori told him she couldn't get away.

When Nolan didn't come home that evening, his parents called police and his friends. His body was found the next morning on a stranger's front porch.

A toxicology test turned up Zoloft, which had been prescribed for anxiety, and a host of other drugs that had not been prescribed, including two additional anti-anxiety drugs, as well as morphine and marijuana.

All investigators could give the family were theories.

"They said they will have parties where the kids will throw a bunch of pills in a bowl and the kids take them without knowing what they are," Lori said. "We called all of his friends, but no one would say they were with him. But he must have been with someone. You just don't do that by yourself."

The triumph of public health policies that have improved traffic safety over the years through the use of seat belts, air bags and other measures stands in stark contrast to the nation's record on prescription drugs. Even though more people are driving more miles, traffic fatalities have dropped by more than a third since the early 1970s to 36,284 in 2009. Drug-induced deaths had equaled or surpassed traffic fatalities in California, 22 other states and the District of Columbia even before the 2009 figures revealed the shift at the national level, according to the Times analysis.

The Centers for Disease Control collects data on all causes of death each year and analyzes them to identify health problems. Drug-induced deaths are mostly accidental overdoses but also include suicides and fatal diseases caused by drugs.

The CDC's 2009 statistics are the agency's most current. They are considered preliminary because they reflect 96% of death certificates filed. The remaining are deaths for which the causes were not immediately clear.

Drug fatalities more than doubled among teens and young adults between 2000 and 2008, years for which more detailed data are available. Deaths more than tripled among people aged 50 to 69, the Times analysis found. In terms of sheer numbers, the death toll is highest among people in their 40s.

Overdose deaths involving prescription painkillers, including OxyContin and Vicodin, and anti-anxiety drugs such as Valium and Xanax more than tripled between 2000 and 2008.

The rise in deaths corresponds with doctors prescribing more painkillers and anti-anxiety medications. The number of prescriptions for the strongest pain pills filled at California pharmacies, for instance, increased more than 43% since 2007 — and the doses grew by even more, nearly 50%, according to a review of prescribing data collected by the state.

Those prescriptions provide relief to pain sufferers but also fuel a thriving black market. Prescription drugs are traded on Internet chat rooms that buzz with offers of "vikes," "percs" and "oxys" for $10 to $80 a pill. They are sold on street corners along with heroin, marijuana and crack. An addiction to prescription drugs can be costly; a heavy OxyContin habit can run twice as much as a heroin addiction, authorities say.

On a recent weekday morning, Los Angeles County undercover sheriff's deputies posing as drug buyers easily purchased enough pills to fill a medicine cabinet on a sidewalk a few blocks south of Los Angeles City Hall.

The most commonly abused prescription drug, hydrocodone, also is the most widely prescribed drug in America, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Better known as Vicodin, the pain reliever is prescribed more often than the top cholesterol drug and the top antibiotic.

"We have an insatiable appetite for this drug — insatiable," Joseph T. Rannazzisi, a top DEA administrator, told a group of pharmacists at a regulatory meeting in Sacramento.

In April, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy announced initiatives aimed at stanching prescription drug abuse. The plans include a series of drug take-back days, modeled after similar programs involving weapons, in which consumers are encouraged to turn leftover prescription drugs in to authorities. Another initiative would develop voluntary courses to train physicians on how to safely prescribe pain drugs, a curriculum that is not widely taught in medical schools.

Initial attempts to reverse the trend in drug deaths — such as state-run prescription drug-monitoring programs aimed at thwarting "doctor-shopping" addicts — don't appear to be having much effect, experts say.

"What's really scary is we don't know a lot about how to reduce prescription deaths," said Amy S.B. Bohnert, a researcher at the University of Michigan Medical School who is studying ways to lower the risk of prescription drugs.

"It's a wonderful medical advancement that we can treat pain," Bohnert said. "But we haven't figured out the safety belt yet."