How you can beat opiate addiction~a first step [infographic]

29 August, 2019 by 4 Comments
BE transparent. Opening up about problems is freeing to you and gives other courage to do the same. In addiction, this can be life-saving.

(The quote from the photo above is from Rachel Hollis).

Transparency+ God+Medical Assistance+Commitment=Freedom from addiction. This is the best formula to beat drug addiction.

This is actually a repost from a few years ago, but I’ve had several people want a copy of the poem at the end so I thought I’d repost.

Since I posted this in 2013, I think our United States has finally recognized the ongoing opiate problem we have and are trying to get laws into effect to prevent addiction. It’s way too late for some, but hopefully my children and grandchildren won’t ever have to face opiate addiction. It’s brutal.

I can’t even count the number of people I’ve known and heard of who have died of opiate addiction since I wrote this post in 2013. The statistics would blow you away. Also since I first wrote this, there is a new player in the illegal drug game…Carfentanyl. It’s a derivative of fentanyl which is used in hospitals fairly regularly. Carfentanyl, however, is 100 times more potent. The illegal drugs such as Heroin and Marijuana and are being laced with Carfentanyl, and the unknowing recipient is dead before the needle ever leaves their arm. Scary, huh!

I thought I’d include an infographic here that may make things more clear:

Drug Abuse, Opiate Addiction, How people become addicted to opiates

But…there is life after addiction! I never thought I’d feel normal again without opiates in my system, but I’m here to tell you I do. My life is incredible and filled with blessings.

If you are battling any type of drug addiction, you are not alone. Sadly, in some groups you could be in the majority. One of the best things you can do is talk to someone. Be transparent about it. A huge weight will be lifted from your shoulders and you’ll have someone supporting you or going through it with you. It’s amazing to watch when one person speaks up, it easily becomes a chain reaction…a reaction that can lead to healing.

Here’s the rest of the original post and the poem at the end. Please share and print the poem if you know anyone who might benefit from it!

Pills…pills…pills…are taking over our families! How have we come to this?  I remember seeing a video about the communist manifesto that discussed the best way to destroy America. From the inside-out. Look at the change in our values and laws over the last 50 years. Look at the infiltration of pornography on television and the internet. The availability of alcohol. The availability of drugs…prescriptions and the illegal ones. I can tell you if I know where to get marijuana, everyone does.

I didn’t know the boy who died of an overdose, but I don’t need to. All I need to know is that he was a son, brother, grandson, great-grandson, nephew, and friend. I pray that he also carried Jesus in his heart and is with him in Heaven right now. The alternative, though very real, is not one I like to think of.

Prescriptions drug overdoses are claiming more lives every day. People—often teenagers—taking them for recreational use have no idea what they can do to you. While their brain thinks it can handle the “high” dose, their lungs and heart cannot. In an instant, their life is over.

Parents are burying their children.

Friends are burying friends.

Brothers are burying brothers.

People who are addicted to prescription drugs as a result of medical reasons end up needing more and more to relieve their pain, withdrawals, or whatever the case may be. Again, their brain think the dose can is needed, but their  heart ceases to beat and their lungs cease to inhale.

Anyone abusing prescription pain medications—no matter what the reason—is fighting a battle in their mind. The classic battle between good and evil, Jesus and Satan. The battle being fought is both physical and spiritual To overcome addiction, I can tell you from experience physical assistance is just not enough. A divine intervention is needed.

A young girl, Ashley, who lost her battle to drugs wrote a poem describing life on drugs is like…the horror actually being offered to us when presented with the decision to use drugs. I took her poem, and added a “rebuttal,” if you will, to show the life than Jesus offers everyone. We must only accept.

Here’s the poem. Please read it slowly and share with anyone whom it might help. If you’d like to have a copy, you can upload a PDF version and print for free by clicking HERE.

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Jesus is the first step to beating drug addiction. Without Him, all other efforts are likely to fail. God is good and He wants you to beat this!
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Filed Under: Addiction, BLOG POSTS, Freedom in Christ, Living in Faith, Managing Prescription Drugs, Overcoming Addiction

The Experience of Addiction~Broken for Others (Graffiti Summer)

19 June, 2013 by 12 Comments

walkinshoesWP

I didn’t realize it at the time, but God allowed me to be broken for others…for seven years. At least it wasn’t forty years like Moses!

For fourteen years I filled prescriptions for people and while I could tell them side effects, interactions, instructions, etc., I could not understand the desperation they felt for these medications. Prescriptions for insomnia, pain, depression, and anxiety. And then of course the prescriptions to get OFF of those meds. Addiction. Desperation. I really didn’t think it could happen to me. But God allowed me to see things from a different perspective. From their shoes.

As I’ve said before, we stay so busy in our own shoes, we don’t think about what it might look like in somebody else’s.

As I’m joining in with Alene Snodgrass for Graffiti Summer, we are talking about being broken for others through the story of Moses. Just click on the link for a free download of the study, and be sure to check out amazon for her book she cowrote with a homeless man.

studyanddo210

 

(I’ll have an interesting post coming up soon about homelessness that my daughter will have input in…be sure to watch for it!)

So this week for my post I’m cheating a little because I’m posting something I’ve already written, but I’m taking a little risk in that it’s an excerpt from my book that I haven’t really let anyone see yet or even talked about much. But just like Moses, it’s God’s story, not mine. So here ya go…part of my own story of being broken for others…

There are plenty of movies depicting addicts in withdrawal, but I’ve never seen what happened to me. Besides the sweating, shaking, headache, and ears ringing, I started throwing up constantly. Literally. When there was nothing in my stomach to come up, up came green bile. Between bringing me warm washcloths for my mouth and cold washcloths for my head, my mom and David were persistently trying to find the best way to get help.

It was not easy.

Research into medical intervention revealed rehab “resorts” hundreds of miles and tens-of-thousands of dollars away, but the local, affordable options were few. Even if I had $30,000 to spend, there was no way I could physically make the trip. After about three days, I could barely hold my head up to vomit, much less pack and get on an airplane. As I camped out on the bathroom floor with my pillow, blanket, and pile of washcloths, I could hear the hush-hush talk about what to do with me. The shame and utter despair I felt for putting my family through this was as unbearable as my state of health.

We finally found a local physician with an outpatient clinic for drug addiction that was not a methadone clinic. Methadone clinics sprung up in the ‘90s when heroin addiction was at its highest. Methadone is a cheap drug that helps with addiction to certain drugs, but the problem is, it’s just as addictive as anything else. The clinic we found dispensed Suboxone, a fairly new drug on the market I’d only dispensed a few times which is used solely for narcotic addiction. It is a short-term substitute for the narcotic—the Lortab in my case—and greatly reduces the effects of withdrawal, and allows the receptors in the brain to dwindle back down to normal.

We immediately called his office. Of course, it just happened to be Friday morning; they said I could not be seen until after the weekend. I honestly didn’t think I would live that long (although now I know just how much a body can endure). They could admit me to Carolina Behavioral Hospital where they’d give me fluids and medicine for nausea, and begin Suboxone treatment there. That news was music to my ringing ears.

Now you have to remember how I grew up—only child, Christian School, very sheltered. You know…in my ivory tower. I heard “hospital” and “fluids” and I imagined a nice sterile, private hospital room with a television and nurses coming to check on me every few hours and give me medicine. I think Mom and David expected the same.

As David pulled us up to the front door, I lay across the back seat of our suburban with my puke bucket in the floor, continually filling it. The nausea and vomiting was relentless, and there must have been a hammer constantly pounding my head. David went inside to see how to get checked in, and what seemed like days later, he returned with a nurse and a wheelchair.  As they took me down hall after hall and through password required doors to the detox ward, I wanted to disappear. The pain and nausea combined with my shame and desperation took me to a place so low I could have just melted and become one with the floor. Though I wouldn’t have wanted that floor to be my final resting place.

My “hospital” expectations were not even close. As I sat in a wheelchair with my trusty bucket in my lap, David and Mom checked me in, and we proceeded to follow a nurse back to that area. My worst nightmare began to come true as I scanned my new environment. There was a common area with a small television and a few old sofas that looked like they’d been rescued off the street. The “hospital” room reminded me of the worst dorm room on a college campus. The other patients—men and women—were dressed like homeless people coming to a shelter for a warm meal.

As the nurse explained procedure, I could see my mom and David looking around the room in shock and fear at the thought of leaving me. After hearing a bit of conversation from a few of the male residents, they made the decision to take me home.

I was so desperate; I told them to leave me. I had to have some help and there was no other option.

Never had I seen my mom look so helpless. The thought of leaving her baby girl in such a place was more than she could bear. I’ve never asked because my heart couldn’t take it, but I’m sure her eyes were pouring tears as she drove home.

David has since shared with me that leaving me at there was one of only three times in his life he has sobbed from being heartbroken. No one expects or prepares for this type of heartbreak. When he left, he picked up the kids from his mom and took them to the beach. He needed some distance from the situation and the kids needed something to keep their minds occupied. They didn’t know the whole situation at the time, but they knew enough to know something was wrong, that I was very sick.

As a wife and mom, the words “burden” and “failure” don’t begin to describe how I felt. I had done damage to myself physically, but I had hurt my family emotionally and created injuries that would be much more difficult to heal. Scars that would last a lifetime.

Once I was left in the hands of the nurses, the process started. They went through every single pocket, page, bottle and seam of every item that came with me and left me with the bare minimum. No cosmetics, no liquids, no hairbrush, no razor, no earrings … the bare minimum. My environment was surreal. As I lay on the cardboard bed with the questionable blanket, throwing up in my puke bucket, which sat on the nasty blue carpet, I could not believe I actually told David to leave me. The promise of fluids and nursing care was empty. For twenty-four hours, I was left to throw up, unattended.

Other patients left and returned at the sound of the school bell for meals, group therapy, and smoking breaks. I ate nothing. Finally, a nurse came to get me for my appointment with the psychiatrist to begin my Suboxone treatment. He laid out a three-day plan to fix me.

Three days. Now that would be something.

Dr. Psychiatrist wrote orders to start me on the Suboxone and an injection of Phenergan for the nausea. The male nurse on duty proceeded to lead me to the lovely—and oh-so-sterile—plaid sofa to give me my injection. As he was preparing it, the school bell rang and he just sat back and looked at me.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Aren’t you going to go out and smoke? Isn’t that what you people do?”

You people. Are you kidding me? “I’ve never once put a cigarette to my mouth and I have no intention of starting now.”

I was the only patient who did not go outside to smoke. As a matter of fact, most of the staff went with them. Mr. Nurse proceeded to give me the injection and go on his merry way. I remained in disbelief at the stereotypic category in which I was just dumped. I began to see a pattern, though, with most everyone there. When everyone walked back inside, one of the male patients plopped down on the sofa next to me and said, “So, what’s your drug of choice?”

Drug of choice?

I might as well have been staring at an alien. I was definitely in another world.

 

I definitely walked in some scary shoes. Shoes that gave me an entirely new perspective, which is what Graffiti summer is all about. We don’t realize how quickly our own situation can change, and we find ourselves where we never thought we’d be. Feel free to tweet that 🙂

Have you walked in any unexpected shoes that shifted your paradigm?

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Filed Under: Living in Faith, Living with Purpose, Managing Prescription Drugs, Overcoming Addiction, Prescription Drugs, Real Relationships

Tips to a Happier You in 2012~Choosing to See Truth

16 June, 2012 by 1 Comment



As a pharmacist who became the patient for seven years, I gained quite the understanding on depression. If you’ve never experienced it, I’m rejoicing with you! It’s not a place you want to go. If you have experienced it…well, I’m right there with you. 


In the gloomy pit of despair and hopelessness that is depression, desperation is born. The desire to be out of that pit is overwhelming. We will do anything to get out. 


Prozac, one of the most prescribed medications for depression, was approved by the FDA just as I began practicing. It was the first antidepressant in its class of serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That particular class has grown drastically over the last twenty-two years and has actually spun off into a new class—serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors. For a list of the serotonin reuptake inhibitors, click here. For a list of serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, click here.


During my first fourteen years as a pharmacist, I couldn’t begin to tell you how many Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil prescriptions I filled. I never understood the desperation behind those prescriptions. In the last few years, Cymbalta—one of the newer antidepressants—has gained popularity. Drug companies in the U.S. have invested millions in research, marketing, and advertising making antidepressants the most prescribed class of drugs in our country. 


A 2007 article at CNN Health, “CDC: Antidepressants most prescribed drugs in U.S.,” says the following: 

According to a government study, antidepressants have become the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. They’re prescribed more than drugs to treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, or headaches. CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen discusses the CDC study on antidepressants.

In its study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 2.4 billion drugs prescribed in visits to doctors and hospitals in 2005. Of those, 118 million were for antidepressants.

A 2011 article at Harvard Health Solutions, “Astounding increase in antidepressant use by Americans,” gave the following statistics: 

  • According to a report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the rate of antidepressant use in this country among teens and adults (people ages 12 and older) increased by almost 400% between 1988–1994 and 2005–2008.
  • 23% of women in their 40s and 50s take antidepressants, a higher percentage than any other group (by age or sex)
  • Women are 2½ times more likely to be taking an antidepressant than men (click here to read a May 2011 article in the Harvard Mental Health Letter about women and depression)
  • 14% of non-Hispanic white people take antidepressants compared with just 4% of non-Hispanic blacks and 3% of Mexican Americans
  • Less than a third of Americans who are taking a single antidepressants (as opposed to two or more) have seen a mental health professional in the past year
  • Antidepressant use does not vary by income status
Are you getting the picture? 

During my seven years as a patient, I was desperately searching for a cure for my depression (among other things). I tried a few of the antidepressants, none of which helped my depression. Cymbalta, in particular, caused so many side effects and drug interactions, I think it made me more depressed. And when I decided to go off of it, I had to wean very slowly to avoid withdrawals (nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea) from this drug that we are told is not addictive. 

Okay. I’ve said all that to say this: 

We’ve got to stop trying to take the easy way out of everything. 

God created our brain—every little complex, intricate detail—to deal with sadness and depression. He also gave us our eyes—the sense of sight.  

In an article at Mood-Factory on the power of color, Susan Minamyer tells us this: 

Bright colors, such as yellow, reflect more light and stimulate the eyes. Yellow is the color that the eye processes first, and is the most luminous and visible color in the spectrum. 

And what color did God decide for the sun? 

I don’t believe that to be a coincidence. 

Seasonal Affective Disorder gives us further proof of this. It’s a kind of depression that occurs a certain time of the year, usually in the winter months. There is even a special type of light you can buy that mimics sunlight. And yes, I have one of those too. 

Now I’m not totally against antidepressants. I do believe in some cases they are necessary. 
But in the United States, we want immediate gratification. Consider this excerpt from the CNN Health article quoted above: 
Dr. Ronald Dworkin tells the story of a woman who didn’t like the way her husband was handling the family finances. She wanted to start keeping the books herself but didn’t want to insult her husband.
The doctor suggested she try an antidepressant to make herself feel better.
She got the antidepressant, and she did feel better, said Dr. Dworkin, a Maryland anesthesiologist and senior fellow at Washington’s Hudson Institute, who told the story in his book “Artificial Unhappiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class.” But in the meantime, Dworkin says, the woman’s husband led the family into financial ruin.

 

“Doctors are now medicating unhappiness,” said Dworkin. “Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives.”

We have a choice.  

We choose what we see. 

Your eye is a lamp that provides light for you body. 
When your eye is good, your body is filled with light.

We choose to see things that make us happy. We choose to see light or dark. We choose to see truth. 
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet 
and a light unto my path. 
(Psalm 119:105 KJV)

Doctors see only a sliver of our lives, yet we expect them to fix us. It’s not their fault, really.  With advertising and the Internet, we typically walk into their office knowing what we want. As patients, we need to look deeper. 

What are you choosing to see?

From my heart, 
Celeste
For more information, check out my delicious stacks: “Antidepressants” and “What you see is what you get.”

If this post was of particular interest to you, check out an older post, “America on Drugs.”
Filed Under: Beating Depression, Brain Functions, Chronic Illness, Managing Prescription Drugs, Tips to a Happier You Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Tips to a Happier You in 2012~Do you have insomnia? Learn how to sleep!

11 February, 2012 by Leave a Comment
When God created the earth, he rested on the seventh day. Wouldn’t it be nice if we only had to rest once a week? It sure would free up time for my to-do list. But sleep doesn’t work that way. God created us to need sleep, and unfortunately, a little more than once a week. 
When I was in the midst of my seven years of hell, insomnia plagued me frequently. In my depression, all I wanted to do was sleep. But also in my depression, I didn’t want to do anything at all, so my brain never really told my body it needed sleep. So of course the pharmacist in me took the easy way out—a sleeping pill called Ambien. The depression and lack of activity, however, even kept the Ambien from working the way it should. I never slept for more that two to three hours at a time, and once I went twenty-one days straight with not one wink of sleep. I know, I’d tell you it was impossible too if I didn’t experience it myself. 
The sleep-wake cycle is complex. No two ways about it. There are six stages total sleep-wake cycle, and each of the following hormones plays a part: Cortisol, Acetylcholine, Glutamine, Norepinephrine, Dopamine, Serotonin, Adenosine, Galanin, GABA, Melatonin, Progesterone, etc.; are you getting the picture? Did God create a complex brain or what? He knew what he was doing and He gives us instructions on how to take care of it.
…And when they sleep, they will wake refreshed. 
(Jeremiah 31:26 CEV)
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil;
For he gives to his beloved sleep. 
(Psalm 127:2 ESV)
And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” 
For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 
(Mark 6:31 ESV)
On September 25, 2010, when God showed mercy on me and rescued me from the pit I was in, quite a few light bulbs came on. The revelations didn’t come all at once, but over a few months God revealed truths to me that I couldn’t see in the pit. I won’t bore you with too much sciency stuff, but I want to give you some absolutes about sleep. 
•   Some type of exercise early in the day will help you sleep at night. 
When we exercise, our body makes cortisol (our fight or flight hormone), which lasts in our body about eight hours. It also breaks down ATP to give us energy and a hormone called adenosine. Once the cortisol level begins to drop off early in the evening, the adenosine is there and ready to calm us down to get ready to sleep. If we exercise too late in the day, the timing doesn’t allow this process to occur any faster, so we can’t get to sleep. Since I’ve started running in the mornings, I’m typically asleep within a minute…once I stop talking of course. 

•   A sleeping pill is meant for short-term use only. 

As is the case with many drugs, once your body becomes used to them, their effect declines. Ambien, a common one used today, activates GABA receptors in your brain that control the rhythm of sleep cycles. It’s speculated that Ambien does not allow for an adequate amount of REM sleep which is necessary to recall past events. If you’ve ever taken Ambien, you know that it really messes with your memory. I can remember waking up in my bed, having no memory of the night before—no memory of getting the kids to bed, cleaning up the kitchen, or taking my shower, yet apparently I had done them all. 

•   Meditation can be a powerful tool, not medication. 

I used to roll my eyes when people told me that. I always thought meditation was just a new age title for prayer. Now I have been known to recommend prayer at bedtime, because when we pray, the devil will put us right to sleep! But when insomnia is a problem, prayer can sometimes make us dwell on the things in our lives that cause worry. Here’s a little meditation trick that I find very helpful when you can’t go to sleep: 

When you are in the bed completely relaxed, begin breathing in and out slow to the count of four.
Breathe in…1 2 3 4; breathe out…1 2 3 4.
Repeat.
 Each time you breathe out, try to let your body relax a little more by the count of four. 
By counting, your brain doesn’t have time to think about all of the things trying to crowd your brain. The repetitive action of counting and breathing naturally helps our bodies produce calming hormones like melatonin. It works like a charm. 
•   Sleep in a dark, quite room. 

The happy hormone that I’ve talked so much about, serotonin, is actually converted to melatonin to help us get into that deep sleep. However, it is impossible for serotonin to be converted to melatonin in light. Melatonin can only be produced in the dark. That’s why it’s so difficult for people who work third shift to get on a sleep cycle that is effective, and why there is such a high incidence of depression and insomnia in Alaska when the sun shines twenty hours out of the day. It may be “all in our mind,” but it’s the chemicals “all in our mind” that are in control. 
I know this was a lengthy post, but sleep is essential to everything we are. Lack of sleep causes us to be depressed, overweight, fatigued, in pain, short-tempered, stressed, anxious, etc., and insomnia plagues more people than you might think. Please share this with anyone you know who suffers from insomnia. The pharmaceutical world we live in pushes us to take this for that or that for this, when the best answer to insomnia is simple lifestyle changes. 
So put some of these tips into practice and sleep your way to a happier you! 
From my heart, 

Celeste
Filed Under: Beating Depression, Brain Functions, Making Changes, Managing Prescription Drugs, Physical Wellness, Tips to a Happier You Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Understanding the “Why” Behind Depression

12 January, 2012 by 2 Comments


     During the process of writing my “Tips to a Happier You” series, I’ve thought about how I felt in the midst of my depression. Would I have been receptive to small, practical tips to help my depression? I can tell you the answer is no. There are just some lessons we have to learn the hard way. If I could have put some of these things into practice, I’m sure I would not have had to endure the hell I went through…oh if I’d only listened to some of the instruction given to me! But honestly, I let myself fall into the “I need it NOW” trap.
 
I let myself get wrapped up in the desire for immediate gratification. I wanted a magic pill to solve all of my problems. And let me tell you, there are drug companies that advertise their drugs on television and promise to do just that. Just like any advertising, they tell you all the benefits and none of the risks. They tell you how good the drug is going to make you feel, but they neglect to tell you all of the risks associated with taking it. Sure they mention some of the more common side effects, but only after they have you totally hooked on the awesomeness of their miracle drug. And when they do list any side effects, it comes through your television  mimicking the voice of the teacher in Charlie Brown, and it’s in the last three seconds of the commercial. 
     Okay, now that I’ve bashed antidepressants, let me say this: There is a real need for antidepressants, and they are appropriate under the right circumstances.
I just don’t believe they need to be the first choice treatment. 
Often when someone is placed on an antidepressant, it is situational. They have become depressed as a result of some event in their life. Sadness is a natural first response to any type of trauma we might experience. We become self-absorbed. We tend to think “poor me.” The next step we take is critical, and is dependent on the condition of our brain. The person 
who will end up depressed doesn’t have the ability to think, “What do I do from here?” 
     Here’s why (sorry, I’m about to get a little “sciency” on you): We have a part of our brain called the pre-frontal cortex. It is the part of our brain that reacts to trauma. If there is enough serotonin in our brain to activate the pre-frontal cortex, we will be sad, but will be able to recover from the trauma and look forward. If our brain is low on serotonin, our pre-frontal cortex is essentially dead and that’s when we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a physical abnormality, and it’s why people cannot typically “will” themselves out of depression. 
     Whether you are on an antidepressant or not, the tips I am giving here can be incorporated into your lifestyle. All of these tips are small, practical habits you can incorporate into your life and will benefit you whether you’re on an antidepressant or not. Once you have a few in place and are feeling better, you very well might be able to slowly come off of the antidepressant. You certainly don’t have incorporate all of these tips, just whichever ones strike your fancy! 

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Filed Under: Beating Depression, How to be Happy, Making Changes, Managing Prescription Drugs Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Help, I’m in pain!

14 October, 2011 by 3 Comments
     Have you ever seen a house that was taken over by stray cats? It all starts with just one stray cat. You feed it. It has kittens. You feed them. They have kittens, and so on and so on and so on. You end up with around 50 cats living in, under, and around your house, waiting to be fed. You get more food because you are feeding more cats. It becomes an out of control situation. What happens if you don’t feed them? They come to the door, to your feet, and pester you to death until you until you do! They get on your nerves, they might even get mean, and scratch or bite you.
     This is an analogy to help understand what happens to our brain when we take narcotics for pain like Lortab, Vicodin, or Oxycodone. Our brains have receptors that tell us when we are in pain. For the sake of explanation, lets say we normally have 10 receptors. Drugs in the narcotic class are the only drugs that truly block those receptors to relieve pain. Narcotics taken for short periods of time are typically not a problem. But when we keep feeding narcotics to those receptors, they begin to multiply like stray cats. Where we once had 10 receptors that perceive pain, we now have 100, or 500, or 1000. So what do we do? We have to feed them more. They continue to multiply. What happens if we take that narcotic away? Those receptors attack more ferociously that any amount of cats ever could. This is physical addiction. Narcotics will actually change the chemistry of our brains.
     When I began having migraines and seizures, I was prescribed a narcotic to use when the pain could not be controlled any other way. I took it off and on as needed, only it seemed like I needed it more and more often. My pain tolerance got lower and lower. When I ended up taking Lortab for two months after a seizure, broken nose, and sinus surgery, I couldn’t go off of it without throwing up constantly. My receptors were out of control. At this point, any tolerance I had at all completely disappeared. I struggled as my brain and body screamed for relief. 
     When God healed me and I became free from all medication, a floodlight came on in my brain. I looked back over my journey and realized something about pain I’d never realized before. When I began using pain medicine off and on to relieve migraines, my headaches intensified. Then when I began taking it even more often, the headaches were unbearable. The increased receptors in my brain were causing my perception of pain to be worse. Now that I have been off all medication for over a year, the migraines that once sent me to a dark room in tears are now just headaches. They are unpleasant and aggravating, but they no longer stop me in my tracks. 
     True, full-blown addiction typically requires help. It’s a tough battle to win, but with God, nothing is impossible. My focus here is on the millions of people every day who take just one Lortab at bedtime to be able to sleep, or just one Oxycontin in the morning to allow them to be able to work. Taking small maintenance doses of a narcotic increases pain receptors just enough to increase pain perception. We may think it’s the pain that is worsening when it might just be the perception of pain is higher because of the receptors. 
     God created those pain receptors in our brain–just the right amount–because we need to perceive pain to know when something is wrong. He made us in His image. He didn’t intend for those receptors to torture us, but when we feed them too often, they grow. And grow and grow and grow.  If you are taking a low maintenance dose of a narcotic, you probably perceive your pain to be worse than it really is. If you can stop taking it long enough for your brain to get back to normal, I bet you’d realize the pain isn’t nearly as bad as it once was. Give it a try if you can. Believe me, I never thought I’d see the day that a migraine headache didn’t send me screaming to a dark, quiet room for the duration.
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Filed Under: Managing Prescription Drugs, Overcoming Addiction Tagged With: , , ,

A Whole Man

22 September, 2011 by Leave a Comment

     Do you find yourself on a wild goose chase when you develop some sort of symptom you cannot figure out? That chase can lead to many painful years of you get trapped in it. I believe it’s time to take our health into our own hands (which are in God’s hands) to get the best possible care in medicine today.

     Creation: God created the heavens and the earth…light and dark, water and land, fish and birds, land animals…all on different days. 

      When God created man, Adam, he created him all at once. He didn’t create his head one day, then his toes, his kidneys, fingernails, brain, liver, nostrils, kneecaps, heart…you get the picture. He created our bodies as a masterpiece, all together, in his image. So obviously, he created our body to work as a whole. Some parts cannot survive without the others. So why, then, do we end up seeing one doctor for our eyes, one for our heart, one for our brain, one for our bones, etc. There are so many systems, organs, enzymes, neurotransmitters, hormones, and so forth, that no one doctor can possibly be an expert in everything. And that is understandable, but here’s where the problem comes in. Every day I see people who are mindlessly wandering from doctor to doctor to try to solve their problem. Each specialist will rule out anything that he might be able to find, and then pass the buck to the next specialist. To be thorough, they will typically run every test known to man in their area so they won’t miss anything and later be sued.  

     We need help. As patients, we need to find one doctor who can look at the whole picture–the whole body that God created–and think out of the box sometimes. Many doctors will simply not take the time or have the time to do this, so as patients it’s our responsibility to find that one person who can manage your “whole picture.” Between you and God, you can find the physician for you. Be informed, and then hold your doctor accountable. And from personal experience, I would find this person BEFORE you actually need them. Interview them. Remember it’s your body and they want your business. Let them know what you need and expect from them and see how they respond. 

     You know my story (or if you don’t go back and read in this blog under the “my story” page). I want to share another story with you that is a perfect example of the pitfall we step into when we don’t have one doctor than can keep an eye on everything, in conjunction with our specialists. I am going on memory here, but I think all the details are correct…

     A pastor of a church began getting dizzy. Then dizzier and dizzier and dizzier. He had to go on disability. He went to a neurologist who performed general tests, including an EEG (to scan his brain waves). Something in the scan prompted him to believe this man was experiencing some sort of seizure causing his dizziness. The doctor put him on an anti-seizure medication. Still dizzy. Added another one. Still dizzy. Added yet another one. Still dizzy. He ended up in a hospital in Texas for around two months so they could monitor him and see if they could figure it out. After those two months (and probably $200,000), he was still dizzy. His wife had enough and said, “when.” She talked him into going to a health and wellness doctor…someone capable of looking at the whole picture. In that appointment, the doctor learned that he’d started taking Lipitor for cholesterol shortly before his dizziness started years ago. But Lipitor is for cholesterol. How could this possibly matter? 

     Well, this new doctor told him to stop taking the Lipitor for a few days and see if he could tell a difference. Wouldn’t you know he started feeling better? The dizziness began to subside. As the Lipitor was stripping fat from his blood, it was also stripping the “good fat” from his brain. Thus, the dizziness. He was on disability for four years and is now stuck on three medications that he probably never needed, but going off them too rapidly is dangerous.  Because this one doctor who was willing to take time to look at the whole picture, he is getting his life back again. 

     Our bodies are complex. It is an absolute miracle to me that such a complicated being could result from just and egg and a sperm, and God made it that way. We all must find our own balance, but if we take the best knowledge we have, listen to what our bodies are telling us, and go to God for guidance, hopefully the wild goose chases will begin to decrease. It may seem an overwhelming task at times, but really it’s just about changing our way of thinking. No matter how much book knowledge a doctor has, he cannot feel what you feel. No one knows your body like you do and like God does. 

     God created man…us…our bodies. Doctors are there to help us. We need to find a doctor that meets our needs, and thinks along the same lines. With God in control. 
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Filed Under: God's Pharmacy, Managing Prescription Drugs, Physical Wellness, Your Relationship with God Tagged With: ,

America on Drugs

4 August, 2011 by 3 Comments

Bear with me here guys, this is a long post, and this comes from years of being a pharmacist and the personal experience of being a patient…but for anyone on an antidepressant or other “brain” drug, you need to read this:


Your Brain on Drugs…no, I won’t be showing you a picture of a fried egg, though I must say it’s a great analogy! We know street drugs fry your brain, that’s a no-brainer! (Sorry =o)
I’m talking about prescription drugs…and not just the “controlled” ones. I’m talking about all of the psychotropic drugs prescribed in the United States today. As a pharmacist, it has made me crazy to see this huge increase in my years in this industry. As a patient, I fell right into the trap. Let me give you just a few statistics from reputable sources to put it in perspective for you…


A study was done by the American Medical Association from 1988 to 1994, during which time the visits to a physician for depression increased from 10.99 million in 1988 to 20.43 million in 1994. Visits for stimulant drugs increased from .57 million to 2.86 million. In a much more recent study, the Centers for Disease Control the percentage of people who use five or more prescriptions drugs increased by 70% in the last 10 years. It’s obvious to me that this increase is largely due to the increase in psychotropic prescription visits. 


Our society is in danger. Real danger. Christians and non-Christians alike. Many physicians  are prescribing narcotics, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and other miscellaneous psychotropic drugs like candy, and do not realize the true danger they are putting their patients in. Different doctors and different pharmacies lead the way to missed information and drug interactions. Doctors cannot possibly keep up with all of the drug interactions possible between the thousands of prescription drugs on the market today. Even as a pharmacist, I ended up with a potentially life threatening drug interaction that my doctor(s) and pharmacist missed. I had not been working in pharmacy during the time Cymbalta was approved and put on pharmacy shelves, and due to an interaction with my migraine prescription medication, I ended up in a state for 24 hours where I did not know what was real and what wasn’t. I didn’t know if this world was real, or if I was dead or alive. At one point, I did not know David was my husband. Marlee was laying next to me in the bed and I actually asked David if she was dead. It was the scariest night of my entire life. I know this sounds crazy, and even when I was in the midst of it I felt sure that I would wake up in a straight jacket staring at four white walls!  


When my reality began to become more clear, due to my pharmacy training I knew what happened. I immediately began researching the medications I had taken, and quickly discovered I’d experienced serotonin syndrome. Now I must say should have known the possibility of this interaction, but in this case, my brain was, well, sick. Seizures, migraine, depression, and medication did not leave me in the mind to catch these things…my doctor and pharmacist should have caught it. I know that when my prescription was filled, the pharmacist was required to manually override a drug interaction possibility, which means they just overrode it by habit, without really looking, or just neglected to mention it. Last summer,in a total of approximately eight days working as a relief pharmacist, I called doctors on four separate occasions to warn them of this exact same interaction. All four times the prescriptions were changed. 


This incident is just one of millions that happen daily. While there are definitely patients that require psychotropic drug therapy, these drugs are widely overused. I’m not sure why doctors feel so much more comfortable prescribing these drugs now than in the past, but where therapy was once first course of treatment, doctors now tend to give the drug first, to “dial things down” before therapy is started. Once the patient gets the prescription, they do not want to follow up with expensive therapy. Our society of immediate gratification and prescription drug advertising on every venue possible lead us to the “quick fix.” After all, “Depression Hurts, Cymbalta can help.” Right? 


Due to the depression I experienced during my years of seizures, my doctors kept trying to get me to take an antidepressant. I finally conceded and began taking Cymbalta. If I wasn’t miserable before, I sure was then! After about a month on the Cymbalta, I felt horrible and was still depressed, so I decided I would wean off of it. Ha! Now that was a joke. The “non-addictive, harmless” antidepressant was everything but. I know you have all seen the commercial for Cymbalta, but in my research I stumbled across a youtube video that really makes the point.  It is a little on the extreme side, but only a little. 


Depression hurts, Cymbalta hurts more


Before I conclude, let me just say this…there is certainly a need and a place for antidepressants. We have just come to rely on the quick fix of drugs way too much. If you happen to be on Cymbalta and doing well, Yay! For me, many of the side effects of Cymbalta were front and center. As patients, we have just become too trusting:


First,we trust our doctors to know everything we need to know. No one can know everything. 


Second, we expect our pharmacists not to be too busy to counsel us every aspect of the drug, but they can’t control the 15 people waiting on prescriptions at once (and I can assure you, the chain pharmacies push the limit on the number of prescriptions allowed per pharmacist), nor can they control the hurry we are in to get out of the pharmacy.


Third, we trust the FDA not to put anything on the market that could harm us. It is sad we cannot depend on our government to keep our best interests at heart, but unfortunately, the almighty dollar often takes priority.


And yet, we are not trusting enough in God. We don’t believe and trust that God is all that we need. I know I used the verse on this prescription in another post, but it says so much. When God created the earth, and created man to inhabit the earth, he gave us everything we’d ever need. With so much emphasis placed on the synthetic psychotropic drugs available today, we lose our focus. We need to think simply and eternally at the same time. More talking, more prayer, more God. Put God at the head of your medical team, and let him lead you in the very best way to restore your mind…for eternity. 


From my heart, 
Celeste

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Filed Under: Beating Depression, God's Pharmacy, Living in Faith, Managing Prescription Drugs, Overcoming Addiction Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

God’s Pharmacy

27 July, 2011 by 4 Comments

When God created the earth, it was good. So when he created man, we had everything we would ever need. Between the resources he gave us and the brain he equipped us with, mankind was all set. Until…


Sin. 


Everything on this earth was created from, well, this earth. We started out with what God gave us, and that is all we have ever had. All resources we have ever needed were given to us when God created this earth. 


Normally if I hear anyone speak of this verse, it’s in relation to nutrition, food choices, or a vegetarian diet. I’m going a little deeper. In pharmacy school, I learned about the origin of all pharmaceuticals. What  would you imagine it is? If God created everything on this earth, then things on this earth were all we had to work with. Between the use of our brains and the resources God gave us, our “pharmacy” was created. There actually use to be a class in pharmacy school called  “Pharmacognosy,” which is the study of medicines derived from natural resources, but most school have eliminated that class because we have manipulated drugs so much that the “natural” part of the drug is basically obscure. 


In the development of drugs over the years, scientists have discovered amazing chemicals  vital to survival. The problem is, however, the more we learned about what our brain can do and what chemicals can do, the farther we have strayed from the pharmacy God created for us. Sometimes knowledge is power, sometimes it’s dangerous. Depends on what you do with it. Ever been told that you know too much for your own good? 


Take the coca plant for instance. It is a plant that God created that is now used in manufacturing cocaine. Someone, sometime, somewhere, realized the effect the coca plant can have on your brain if altered a certain way. We have many chemicals in our brain God gave us to help us live as he desired, in his image. Seratonin and dopamine are well known from the knowledge of the popular antidepressants so widely dispensed today (Prozac,  Zoloft, Cymbalta, etc…). The manipulation of these chemicals with synthetically altered resources has landed our society in the mess it is today with extremely addictive, dangerous, and illegal drugs.


I have added two links here you should check out…both from reputable sources.


The first is a fact sheet on commonly abused drugs, where they came from and how they work, published by the American Council on Drug Education. You might be surprised by some of this information…Fact Sheets on Drugs.


The second is a video by National Geographic on “meth”, and how it actually works in your brain. I know you will be surprised by some of this info. Here’s the link…The science behind your brain on drugs.


This information is important. This immediate gratification, computer generation we’re in is moving too fast. Kids are hooked on drugs before they can even realize what they are. Drugs are being used more and more casually, and if we don’t educate ourselves and our kids, it will be too late. I thank God every day that when I had a hard time getting off Lortab after  sinus surgery, that I was educated at least enough to recognize it, and do what I needed to break free from it. Someone in the same situation without the knowledge of how it happened and what to do will often turn to the street to get what they need. As parents, it is imperative that we learn. Don’t be the parents that think, “my kid would never do that, he’s too smart,” or “that kind of stuff doesn’t happen in our school around here.” I’m telling you it does. It’s everywhere. And don’t think for a minute that your child is the only one at risk. Adults are at the same risk, if not more. How do you beat drug addiction? 


Education and prevention. Once the addiction has found it’s home, it’s an overwhelming beast to overcome.


I’m going to leave it at this for now. There is so much more to be said, and I will discuss it more in future blog posts. But the main point today is this…


God created us in his image. He gave us everything we should ever need. If we have God working in our hearts, and let our brains function as he created, we will never have the need to seek out “alternative” methods to escape our reality. 


…as I gave you the green plants, I gave you everything. 


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Filed Under: Brain Functions, God's Pharmacy, Managing Prescription Drugs, Overcoming Addiction Tagged With: , , , , , ,