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A Wednesday seminar on prescription drug abuse brought together Ohio State University medical representatives to speak to local drug counselors. Pictured above, Dr. Gerald Cable, the director of Outreach and Engagement, addresses the audience.
Seminar focuses on dangers of prescription drug abuse
September 19, 2008 at 12:04 pm
By RYAN HORNS
Marysville area physicians and drug counselors met Wednesday to combat prescription drug abuse throughout the region.
Consolidated Care, Inc. and the Mental Health and Recovery Board organized a seminar with regional physicians and counselors at the Union County Community Services Building on London Avenue.
“There is a huge drug abuse issue in this county,” Union County Prosecutor Dave Phillips told the audience. “I just don’t want to see any more adults and kids die.”
From 3 to 5 p.m. several representatives from The Ohio State University counseling and drug abuse programs, local pharmacist Dave Burke, Phillips and Mental Health and Recovery Board executive director Mike Witzky spoke about their concerns with the direction of heroin and prescription drug abuse.
OSU therapist and counselor Curt Haywood said he has been fighting a belief among the younger generations that prescription drugs are “safer” than illegal narcotics. Reports show that 40 percent of 12th grade students think prescription drugs are safer than illegal drugs. A total of 29 percent feel that they are not addictive.
Each person on the panel agreed that the biggest misconception is that prescription drugs are not harmful.
“These are mythical beliefs,” Ken Hale of the OSU College of Pharmacy said.
“A lot of times these students think they are invincible,” Haywood added.
Students and juveniles think the drugs give them an illusion of confidence and energy, which they don’t realize is entirely psychological, Haywood said. They will abuse stimulants and dismiss it as a “study tool” to help them get good grades.
What they don’t realize, he said, is that they begin abusing the drugs on a daily basis and start looking and acting strung out. Some fall deep into addictions. One student had a psychotic reaction to his hefty abuse of Adderall and began “seeing birds flying around his dorm room.”
In response to this myth, Dr. Nicole Kwiek, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Medicinal Chemistry at OSU, outlined the chemical structures of specific prescription drugs and compared them to their illegal street narcotic counterpart. She explained that drug abusers don’t understand that prescription medication like Oxycontin is virtually the same chemical structure as Heroin, Ritilan is akin to Cocaine and Valium is similar to Rohypnol, commonly known as “roofies.”
Counselors in the audience noted that local abuse of Oxycontin has switched to Heroin and Methadone.
Kwiek said this makes sense because of the chemical similarities.
Kwiek said the media spotlight was all over the death of actor Heath Ledger. His death is exactly what they are talking about.
She said Ledger was taking Oxycontin, Vicodin, Valium, Xanax and sleeping pills.
“But it was the combination of these drugs that did him in,” she said.
Because of this misunderstanding of prescription drugs, Haywood said that juveniles and students become completely careless. Students in college and high school hold “Pill Parties” in which they raid their parents medicine cabinets and toss all the pills they find into a bowl.
“They take them at will,” he said. “They don’t even know what they are taking.”
Haywood described an MTV special in which physicians attended a party and offered to analyze pills people were taking. Many abusers at the party believed they were taking Ecstasy and doctors were able to find pills that weren’t among the crowd. One girl had a pill that doctors could not identify scientifically. Later, the girl said she happily took the pill anyway.
“I would literally lose it if that was my daughter,” Haywood said. “It could have been a cyanide tablet.”
Phillips said that parents need to realize that these parties are happening among students of North Union, Fairbanks, Marysville and more.
The panel outlined their plans with the audience, mostly made up of local counselors, to focus on educating the public. They also talked about working closely together to increase early childhood education about “Good Pills” and “Bad Pills.”
Phillips said positive results have also come out of local doctors and pharmacists working with police. Abusers have been arrested in the pharmacy drive through. Others have been nabbed trying to run out of their doctor’s offices.
He said another hurdle has been trying to get help from the community. The problem became very clear to him after he broke his back and realized that his pain medication was just sitting in the bathroom and could have been stolen by anyone who came over. Securing pills is important to stopping the abuse.
In some examples of recent crimes, Phillips said deputies arrested a grandmother who gave pills to her grandson to sell on the street so she would have more money. A cop and a local businessman have also been charged with breaking into homes to steal prescription drugs.
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