I recently read an article in a Chicago paper about a "polite…white-collar professional" who had figured out he could get prescription drugs by going to open houses and garage sales and asking to use the bathroom. Naive homeowner after naive homeowner said, "Okey dokey" to the stranger, who then scoured their medicine cabinets for Vicodin and other opiates and related drugs.

He relates how he felt really low the day he stole Vicodin from a house where there was a wheelchair in the bedroom. That didn’t stop him from running to the pharmacy to get the refill that was available. He had to be creative – his habit, at it’s worse, meant 120 pain pills a day. Hard to believe anyone could live through that kind of addiction!

Did you know that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that a whopping 82 percent of the misused prescription medication comes fromthe medicine cabinets of friends and family members?

Teens are more likely to overdose these days on prescription drugs than illegal drugs. Some communities are trying to get a handle on it. Operation Medicine Cabinet, an effort by the Broward Country Sheriff’s Department (and a nationwide law enforcement effirt) informs the public about the risk of leaving prescription drugs around that can easily be taken by teens – sometimes your teens, sometimes your teen’s friends. Imagine the liability if a friend of your teen downed a left over bottle of Vicodin sitting in your unlocked medicine cabinet? Yikes.

There are cases popping up like this – a teenager gives OxyContin to her teen friend, the friend dies, the DA charges the teen who handed over the Oxy.  It’s getting to be serious business. You can read that story here.

The war on drugs has been a dismal failure in my opinion. The focus on intradiction and punishment, with little put toward treatment and rehabiliation, means that demand stays high, regardless of law enforcement efforst. But it also ignores the fact that prescription drugs are becoming far more of a problem than illegal drugs. In Florida prescription drugs have killed 300% more people than illegal drugs.

The moral of the story is: don’t leave prescription drugs where teens can get them. Teens think they are "safer" because they are prescribed by doctors, yet in reality, many of these drugs are more potent than the illegal stuff.

There are some who say that the way in which we communicate – as well as the words used – can say a lot about the way we feel at the time. For researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), depression can be detected in blogs and online texts.

This research was recently captured in a Science Daily release and showed that a software program can detect this depression. Developed by this team of researchers, this software is capable of identifying language that can indicate the psychological state of the writer and could serve as a screening tool.

The software was used to scan more than 300,000 English language blogs posted to mental health websites. The program then identified the 100 bloggers it perceived as the most depressed and the 100 bloggers that were the least depressed. The samples were then evaluated by a panel of four clinical psychologists who concluded there was a 78 percent correlation between the findings of the panel and the software.

According to Professor Yair Neuman, the program was designed to identify hidden depressive content that did not refer to obvious terms such as depression or suicide. A trained psychologist can spot various emotional states through intuition and now this program does this methodically with Web intelligence.

The software program is designed to detect words that express various emotions, such as colors that a writer will use to metaphorically describe certain situations. The word black, for instance, may be combined with another term to describe symptoms of depression, such as loneliness or sleep deprivation.

Neuman acknowledges that software cannot replace excellent human judgment, but it does provide a screening process to raise an individual’s awareness of his or her condition.

I saw this article today that made me both laugh and shake my head in disgust – the topic was Dr. Drew Pinsky diagnosing Sandra Bullock with ” love addiction.” Here’s the link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/29/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main6443548.shtml

My first reaction was to roll my eyes. I mean, does anyone seriously consider Dr. Drew credible these days? This guy is diagnosing people right and left – people he’s never met. It’s unprofessional at best. I think media attention and “celebrity” tend to make people like Dr. Drew a little arrogant.  They think every time a celebrity has a problem, ME to the rescue to diagnose the “disease.”  The problem with these celebrity doctors is that they quickly become so enamored with their fame, they forget how to practice their profession with dignity. Ethical relativism becomes the norm.

Some might say it’s just amusing, but I wonder if these celebrity addiction docs don’t do more harm than good when it comes to educating the public about the powerful, deadly disease of addiction.  Shows like Intervention gives a totally false impression of how interventions work – can you imagine how many idiots are running around doing “interventions” now with no clue as to how to really do it right?  By throwing out love addiction, sex addiction, this addition, that addiction without any thoughtful examination, interview, testing…without ANYthing but a tabloid story…don’t we start to send the message that addiction is just a name we slap onto any situation that turns out badly?   In other words, is sex addiction merely now the label for anyone who gets caught being a cheating pig?   It threatens the progress in researching and treating truly devastating process addictions by making them a big celebrity joke.

No respectable, reputable doctor diagnoses folks without thoroughly examining them, testing them etc. My father was a medical doctor, and I can tell you, he would not under any circumstances diagnose someone without an exam.  You couldn’t call him on the phone and say, “What I got?”

I think the fact that Dr. Drew thinks it is acceptable to broadcast his opinion this way shows how celebrity can utterly corrupt a person – integrity takes a back seat to grabbing the spotlight.

My favorite bit here? When he’s talking about Jesse James he reportedly explains how if the person goes to be treated for sex addiction, they must have sex addiction (like that circular logic?):

“Pinsky reminded viewers that, if someone is admitted to one of these programs, he or she must meet the criteria for a particular diagnosis, such as sex addiction, or a hospital will lose its accreditation.”

Is he from another planet? What criteria?  It’s not even in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual yet, and lots of people have been treated for sex addiction.  This is completely made up!  It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so scary that this guy is being touted as an expert to the public. And frankly, most of these programs are private-pay therapeutic programs,  not hospitals, and they only have to comply with state regulations, which are really pretty basic when it comes to non-medical models of addiction treatment.

Back to Sandra Bullock. She likely just made the age-old mistake so many women make at some point in their lives. She trusted a jackass.  Love addiction?  Give me a break.

Binge drinkers tend to have a lot more denial than people who drink every day.  It’s a shame, because binge drinking has been shown to be far more dangerous – people are more reckless when they binge drink.  Case in point this week: I read a terribly sad story about a 17-year-old high school senior who was recently recruited by Notre Dame to play on their football team. Wow. How awesome is that?!  A dream come true, right?

Thing is, he won’t be showing up at Notre Dame. Ever.  He went on a Florida spring break with friends, ended up drunk, and fell off a 5th floor hotel balcony.  What a sad, needless loss of life! Pounding back drinks for “fun” ended his future last week.  My heart goes out to his parents.  He was probably a good kid with a lot of promise – but denial about the dangers of binge drinking leads many young people into risky circumstances.

Binge drinking kills.  Don’t think just because you drinking a lot on weekends, or just Friday nights, that you will somehow evade the realities of alcohol abuse.

I recently read an article about this online tool to check your drinking behavior. It was created by a Canadian addiction researcher and it seems like a pretty decent tool. It allows you to check off if you are just using it to research, so you don’t skew results.  Once you answer all the questions it show you a few things – how your drinking compares to other people similar to you (age/gender), and if your score indicates a need for treatment.  Sometimes alcoholics need some sort of independent confirmation that they have a problem – this test certainly gives that. It’s also kind of brutal to answer the questions if you have to check off “yes” for many of them. It could certainly serve as a wake-up call for anyone not sure about their drinking behavior.

?Try the test yourself

You might have to go back down memory lane if it’s been a while since you drank, but frankly, it’s also a reminder of what your drinking was like, especially if you ever start thinking, “Oh, I wasn’t really that bad.”