Students Among Patients at OSU Detox Center

The OSU Lantern

Brad Lander works with all sorts of drug addicts. But the most interesting category of patient, he says, are those who choose cocaine as their drug of choice.

“Coke addicts are my favorite,” said Lander, a licensed psychologist and director of Ohio State’s drug and alcohol rehab clinic at OSU East.

The clinic, located at 1492 E. Broad St., typically has about 90 people enrolled in rehabilitation programs at any given time, with 24 beds for inpatient treatment.

The clinic offers programs for people with any drug dependency, and any of age — with some patients as young as 10 to 12 years old.

In the last year and a half, Lander said, there has been a surge of young people coming to the clinic seeking treatment, including some OSU students.

“What most people don’t know is that a lot of students are alcoholics,” said Lander, who has worked at the clinic for eight years. He describes alcoholism as an inherited vulnerability, based on genetics. Although many students abuse alcohol, he said, symptoms often don’t arise until 30 years of age.

At any given time, there are at least two or three college students receiving treatment, Lander said.

Patients typically stay at the clinic for three to four days as they undergo treatment. Upon entering Talbot Hall, patients are given a thick, manila folder containing dozens of forms to sift through: registration forms, confidentiality statements, privacy reports and agreements and, last, a substance dependency assessment.

The assessment determines the extent of damage done to a person’s mental and physical health because of the drugs in their system. It is a crucial first step, Lander says, because it determines the patient’s program, and whether they will need to go through detoxification.

The inpatient detoxification program is an intensive one, according to the OSU Medical Center Web site. Patients receive medication to ease them through the withdrawal process and stabilize them.

“If you walked up to our detox floor, you would see people from all sorts of backgrounds,” Lander said. “You would be amazed how many different people are here at Talbot.”

After the patient is medically stable, he or she is required to participate in the education program. This process consists of lectures, films and discussions to help the patient learn about addiction and how to manage it. Counselors consult with patients individually and assist in developing treatment and post-discharge
plans.

After this process, each patient is given a basic 12-step program to follow.

Making the Case for More Detox Beds

The Northern Echo (UK)

“Massive” shortfall in the number of detox beds available says the private Huntercombe Group's Mick Davies
 

THERE is still a “massive” shortfall in the number of detox beds available to treat alcoholics in the region, it was claimed last night.

Speaking on the eve of a conference in Durham City about facilities for problem drinkers, Mick Davies, addiction services manager with the private Huntercombe Group, said despite the high demand and extra NHS investment there was still a “massive under-capacity of provision” in terms of inpatient detox beds in the region.

This was despite a report last year that found detox facilities in the North-East have improved in recent years, taking the region from the worst in England to being above average.

Mr Davies, whose organisation runs a 14-bed detox clinic in Sunderland, said despite increasing numbers of people in the region needing treatment, there was still no Government directive to ensure that local health authorities invested in more detox facilities.

While some parts of the North-East are investing heavily in a range of treatment, including detox beds, this is not matched in other parts of the region, he added.

“It varies much more than in drug treatments, yet detox programs are the frontline treatment for people with the most serious alcohol problems,” he said.

Mr Davies said detox was a highly effective treatment that works in most cases and which can be carried out for less than £1,000 per head.

He said there was evidence that some people who would benefit from treatment died on waiting lists before getting treatment.

Kevan Martin, a former alcoholic who set up the North East Regional Alcohol Forum to support problem drinkers trying to give up, praised NHS South of Tyne and Wear for investing £5.6m in alcohol treatment programs, contrasting this with a lack of investment in the rest of the region.

“They have put their money where their mouth is. We would like to see other PCTs in the North-East do the same,” he added.

Today’s conference, which is partly sponsored by NHS South of Tyne and Wear, is called Alcohol Detox: Opening the Door to the Treatment Journey.

Foot Pads: a Sticky Issue

The Wall Street Journal

Just put a white adhesive pad on your foot and go to sleep. And overnight, the detoxification foot pads soak up toxins from your body and purify it, resulting in myriad health benefits, according to companies that sell the pads. Scientists say there is no credible evidence the pads are effective, and the Federal Trade Commission has charged one company with deceptive advertising.

Detoxification foot pads, sold by a variety of companies under many brand names, typically contain vinegar, a ground-up gem called tourmaline and often a mix of plant and herbal substances. Cost varies, ranging from about $15 for a packet of 14 to high-end pads costing $5 each.

Typically, sellers claim the pads give off infrared energy, which improves circulation and stimulates release of toxins from the body. Several marketers show pictures of dark, blackened pads after a night's use, claiming this is evidence that impurities were removed.

A test of three pads for this article, however, found all turned black or grey as soon as they were placed under running water. One pad, worn overnight, did darken—but was identical in color to a pad stuck on leftover Chinese food and left at room temperature overnight. Two pads attached overnight to a countertop and an apple remained white.

Natural Standard Research Collaboration, a Cambridge, Mass., scientist-owned group that evaluates natural therapies, reviewed the scientific evidence for detoxification foot pads for this article. The group concluded there is a "lack of reliable data" on the pads.

"The bottom line is there is not high-quality scientific evidence supporting its use," says Catherine Ulbricht, co-founder of Natural Standard and senior attending pharmacist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Risks include possible skin irritation from the adhesive or allergic reactions to one or more of the ingredients, she adds.

Several companies claim the source of the infrared radiation—and some of the health benefits—is the tourmaline. While all materials emit infrared, or heat, energy, tourmaline isn't known to do so any more than anything else, says Darrell Henry, a professor of geology and geophysics at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La. He says he isn't aware of any "legitimate research" that shows any health benefits for the gem.

Early last year, the FTC charged Xacta 3000 Inc., of Lakewood, N.J., with deceptive marketing of Kinoki-brand detox foot pads. In its response to the pending suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, Xacta said it hadn't done anything unlawful. A pending class-action suit by purchasers, filed in the same court, seeks monetary damages from Xacta and another distributor for alleged fraudulent marketing of the product. A lawyer for Xacta, which filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in January, didn't return calls seeking comment.

Other marketers of foot pads say the Kinoki pad has given them a bad name, and at least two have done at least small studies that purport to show their own products work. The Wall Street Journal's search found no large, well-controlled trials on foot-detoxification pads published in any major scientific publication.

Japan's Kenrico Ltd., which sells pads world-wide, says it uses high-quality ingredients not used by some U.S. makers. Kenrico posts several human studies on its Web site, which it says were done by an independent Japanese lab, including two that show reduction in toxins such as lead, mercury, aluminum and arsenic as measured by a hair analysis after three months' use. However studies are small. Kenrico also says data on its pads have been published in a medical journal, but the company declined to provide a copy.

China's Drug Rehab Program: A Punishing Ordeal

NY Times

BEIJING — Fu Lixin, emotionally exhausted from caring for her sick mother, needed a little pick-me-up. A friend offered her a “special cigarette” — one laced with methamphetamine — and Ms. Fu happily inhaled.

The next day, three policemen showed up at her door.

“They asked me to urinate in a cup,” she said. “My friend had been arrested and turned me in. It was a drug test. I failed on the spot.”

Although she said it was her first time smoking meth, Ms. Fu, 41, was promptly sent to one of China’s compulsory drug rehabilitation centers. The minimum stay is two years, and life is an unremitting gantlet of physical abuse and forced labor without any drug treatment, according to former inmates and substance abuse professionals.

“It was a hell I’m still trying to recover from,” she said.

According to the United Nations, as many as a half million Chinese citizens are held at these centers at any given time. Detentions are meted out by the police without trials, judges or appeals. Created in 2008 as part of a reform effort to grapple with the country’s growing narcotics problem, the centers, lawyers and drug experts say, have become de facto penal colonies where inmates are sent to factories and farms, fed substandard food and denied basic medical care.

“They call them detoxification centers, but everyone knows that detox takes a few days, not two years,” said Joseph Amon, an epidemiologist with Human Rights Watch in New York. “The basic concept is inhumane and flawed.”

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the drug rehabilitation system that replaced the Communist Party’s previous approach of sending addicts to labor camps, where they would toil alongside thieves, prostitutes and political dissidents.

The report, titled “Where Darkness Knows No Limits,” calls on the government to immediately shut down the detention centers.

Under the Anti-Drug Law of 2008, drug offenders were to be sent to professionally staffed detox facilities and then released to community-based rehabilitation centers for up to four years of therapeutic follow-up.

But addiction treatment experts say the legislation, part of a stated “people centered” approach to dealing with addiction, has simply given the old system a new name. What is worse, they say, is that it expands the six-month compulsory detentions of old into two-year periods that the authorities can extend by five years.

The “community-based rehabilitation” centers, treatment experts add, have yet to be established.

Wang Xiaoguang, the vice director of Daytop, an American-affiliated drug-treatment residence in Yunnan Province, said the government detox centers were little more than business ventures run by the police. Detainees, he said, spend their days working at chicken farms or shoe factories that have contracts with the local police; drug treatment, counseling and vocational training are almost nonexistent.

“I don’t think this is the ideal situation for people trying to recover from addiction,” Mr. Wang said in a phone interview.

In its report, Human Rights Watch, which largely focused on Yunnan, says the abuses at some of the province’s 114 detention centers are even more troubling. Those with serious illnesses, including tuberculosis and AIDS, are often denied medical treatment. Many inmates reported beatings, some of them fatal.

The Office of National Narcotics Control Commission, which administers China’s drug rehab policy, did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Han Wei, 38, a recovering heroin addict who was released from a Beijing detention center in October, said the guards would use electric prods on the recalcitrant. “At least they’d give us helmets so we wouldn’t injure our heads during convulsions,” he said.

Meals consisted of steamed buns and, occasionally, cabbage-based swill. Showers were allowed once a month. And the remedy for heroin withdrawal symptoms was a pail of cold water in the face. “They didn’t give me a single pill or a bit of counseling,” Mr. Han said.

Despite the deprivations, Mr. Han, a former nightclub owner, said his two-year sentence achieved the desired goal: it persuaded him to kick a habit he began in 1998. “I’m never going back,” he said.

Zhang Wenjun, who runs Guiding Star, an organization that helps recovering addicts, said such determination was most often fleeting. At least 98 percent of those who leave the drug detention system relapse within a few years, he said.

Mr. Zhang knows something about falling off the wagon. His own heroin addiction has landed him in detox centers and labor camps six times since the mid-1990s.

“What the government doesn’t realize is that this is a disease that needs to be treated, not punished,” said Mr. Zhang, 42, a tattooed man who speaks in a growl.

In some ways, he said, the stigma of addiction is as crippling as the lure of the next fix. Those arrested for drug offenses are branded addicts on their national identification cards, which makes applying for jobs and welfare benefits acts of futility. And because the local police are automatically notified when former offenders check into hotels, traveling often involves impromptu urine tests and the possibility of humiliation in front of colleagues.

“In China, to be a drug addict is to be an enemy of the government,” Mr. Zhang said.

Still, he and other substance abuse treatment workers are quick to acknowledge the progress that China has made in recent years. There are now eight methadone clinics in Beijing, serving 2,000 people, and more than 1,000 needle-exchange programs have opened across the country since 2004.

Yu Jingtao, whose organization, Beijing Harm Reduction Group, distributes 30,000 clean needles a month, said the government was slowly moving toward the drug treatment model common in much of the developed world. “We’re just caught in a transition period,” said Mr. Yu, himself a recovering addict. “Transition periods are never very pretty.”

Anchorage Tries To Deal With Alcohol, Drugs, Homelessness

NY Times

ANCHORAGE — A man was down, immobile at the edge of one of this city’s busiest intersections. No sirens sounded, no ambulance rushed to the scene. Dealing with the scourge that has consumed Alaska’s biggest city is often delegated to two men in a white van, the Community Service Patrol.

“We have about 50 to 100 regulars that we pick up on a daily basis,” said Josh Wilson, one of the patrol workers.

The man down was homeless and had passed out, drunk, like he often does. Mr. Wilson knew him by name. The Community Service Patrol would soon take him to the city sleep-off center, where by the next morning, if he was sober enough, he would be free to go.

Mr. Wilson said odds were good that he would once again drink and pass out, putting himself and possibly others at risk and demanding intervention from this city’s frayed social safety net.

“Worse,” Mr. Wilson said when asked how things had changed in his two years with the patrol. “Absolutely tenfold worse.”

The police and social service providers say Anchorage has as many as 400 people they call “chronic public inebriates,” with up to 25 percent of them regarded as the most difficult cases. This year, after the deaths of at least 13 homeless people since the spring, there has been a widespread sense that the city’s response has been inadequate and must change.

you simply have a complex issue for which the only solution is let’s lock up the people who are disturbing us. That’s not an effective solution, and in the end it won’t work.”

The new mayor, Dan Sullivan, a Republican, has created a staff position and a task force devoted to addressing homelessness. The police recently gained the authority to dismantle homeless encampments with just 12 hours’ notice. Citizen groups are patrolling parks where homeless camps have been the site of rapes and other violence. But in perhaps the biggest and most controversial break from how the city has handled the problem in the past, a Salvation Army drug detoxification and alcohol abuse treatment center has begun accepting chronic inebriates who have been taken there essentially by force.

With $1.2 million in new state financing pushed through by one of Alaska’s more liberal Democrats, State Senator Johnny Ellis of Anchorage, the facility, the Clitheroe Center, is accepting people committed under a state law, Title 47. Under the law, a judge can order people into secure treatment for 30 days, and potentially for months, if the police, a doctor or family members convince the judge that the person’s abuse of alcohol has made them a threat to themselves and others. The person does not need to have committed a crime.

“Ten years ago, there would have been a community outcry that Johnny Ellis is locking up people with the disease of addiction,” Mr. Ellis said. “ ‘How can he do that and say he’s still a progressive?’ ”



Now, Mr. Ellis said, the problem has increased so much “that for various motivations people are saying let’s try something new.” He added, “The people dropping dead during the summertime really got this community paying attention.”

One homeless person drowned. Another was hit by a car. One died from hypothermia. Most had been drinking, and several had four or even five times the blood-alcohol level above which a person is considered too drunk to drive. Experts say the problem of public drunkenness is part of a larger homeless problem that disproportionately affects Native Alaskans, particularly men who have moved in from rural parts of Alaska and lost their way in the city. The recession has also played a role.

Involuntary commitment of homeless alcoholics has been used elsewhere in the country. Some homeless advocates say it infringes on civil rights, and they question its effectiveness. Here in Anchorage, several longtime advocates said the severity of the situation had made them open to giving it a chance.

“If the access to services and treatment and supportive resources are there, perhaps this Title 47 will be a good thing for people,” said Michael Burke, an Episcopal priest who has worked with homeless alcoholics for two decades. “But if those latter pieces are not present, then you simply have a complex issue for which the only solution is let’s lock up the people who are disturbing us. That’s not an effective solution, and in the end it won’t work.”

Mr. Burke was among several people who said that cuts to longer-term treatment programs in the past had made detoxification efforts ineffective and could render the Clitheroe program irrelevant if they happen again. Mr. Ellis blamed “the Republican budget-cutting era” that took hold in the state capital, Juneau, in the 1990s. “We lost a lot of our treatment capacity,” he said.

He said the new program was deliberately small, paying for just 10 beds at the center.

Several homeless advocates say that new Republican interest in the issue, as well as the comfort level liberals have with Mr. Ellis, is helping to build a coalition of business owners who want to keep streets clean and safe and homeless advocates who are willing to experiment with more assertive tactics. Jeff Jessee, the chief executive of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, which provides a wide variety of social services and financing for them, said that while Mayor Sullivan often says, “We can’t continue to allow these people to take over our public spaces,” he also says, “These chronic inebriates are also citizens, and we owe them better.”

Robert Heffle, the director of the Clitheroe Center, said that political motives were irrelevant to him, and that he was simply glad to get the resources to try something new.

“If we keep doing what we been doing,” Mr. Heffle said, “we’re going to keep getting what we’ve been getting.”