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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — U.S. government hospitals placed Native American patients at increased risk for opioid abuse and overdoses, failing to follow their own protocols for prescribing and dispensing the drugs, according to a federal audit made public Monday.
The report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General does not draw conclusions about actual abuse or overdoses. But it said all five Indian Health Service hospitals that were reviewed had patients who were given opioids in amounts exceeding federal guidelines.
“There are vulnerabilities with this particular population in the opioid prescribing and dispensing practices,” said Carla Lewis, one of the auditors.
The overdose epidemic that has killed more people than any other drug epidemic in U.S. history has hit indigenous communities hard. Native Americans and Alaska Natives had the second-highest rate of opioid overdose out of all U.S. racial and ethnic groups in 2017, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report made more than a dozen recommendations to the Indian Health Service to better track patients’ health records and pain management, ensure opioids are stored under tighter security and update its information technology systems. The agency agreed on every point and said changes were coming.
The Indian Health Service, the federal agency that administers primary health care for Native Americans, has put an increased focus on opioids lately with a new website and the creation of a committee focused on decreasing overdose deaths, promoting culturally appropriate treatments and ensuring that communities know how to respond.
The audit covered five of the 25 hospitals directly run by the Indian Health Service: the Phoenix Indian Medical Center in Phoenix; Northern Navajo Medical Center on the Navajo Nation in Shiprock, New Mexico; the Lawton Indian Hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma; the Cass Lake Indian Hospital on the Leech Lake reservation in Cass Lake, Minnesota; and the Fort Yates Hospital on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in Fort Yates, North Dakota.
Auditors considered the amount of opioids each hospital dispensed and the percentage increase over three years when deciding which ones to review. They looked at 30 patient records at each hospital, visited the facilities and interviewed staff.
The auditors found that the hospitals strayed from guidelines in the Indian Health Manual in reviewing treatment for patients and their causes of pain every three months. Patients also must sign a written consent form and an agreement to treat chronic pain with opioids so they know the risks and benefits, as well as the requirement for drug screenings. More than 100 patient records did not include evidence of informed consent, and dozens did not have evidence that providers adequately educated patients.
The Centers for Disease Control recommends that patients be prescribed no more than 90 morphine milligram equivalents per day, a measure used to compare an opioid dose with morphine.
The audit found that each hospital met or exceeded that amount at times. At the Shiprock hospital, the daily dosage was more than four times as high. The auditors also found some patients were prescribed opioids and benzodiazepines — commonly used to treat anxiety and insomnia —at the same time, which “puts patients at a greater risk of a potentially fatal overdose.”
The Centers for Disease Control recommends that patients be prescribed no more than 90 morphine milligram equivalents per day, a measure used to compare an opioid dose with morphine.
The audit found that each hospital met or exceeded that amount at times. At the Shiprock hospital, the daily dosage was more than four times as high. The auditors also found some patients were prescribed opioids and benzodiazepines — commonly used to treat anxiety and insomnia —at the same time, which “puts patients at a greater risk of a potentially fatal overdose.” (Click to Source)
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June 24, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — I want to share my own convictions as to why followers of Jesus should not smoke pot. I encourage you to consider them prayerfully before the Lord.
First, for the sake of clarity and simplicity, I’m not addressing the issue of the medical use of marijuana, as prescribed by a responsible doctor. While it’s possible these subjects are related, I’m focusing here on the recreational use of marijuana.
Second, I speak from personal experience, both as a follower of Jesus and as a former pot smoker.
In short, I was a heavy drug user from 1969 to 1971, earning the nicknames “Drug Bear” and “Iron Man” in the process. The drugs I used included pot, hash, ups, downs, LSD, mescaline, speed, heroin, and (very briefly, right before I got saved) cocaine.
Many of my friends, colleagues, and former ministry school students were drug users, too, some heavily and some lightly. But we hold the same views today about Christians smoking (or ingesting) pot.
In short, you cannot “be sober and alert” and smoke pot at the same time. Yet God’s Word calls us to the former.
Peter wrote, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8, NIV).
When you smoke pot, even a little, your mind gets into a more relaxed state, a state of lowered alertness and lower sobriety. It’s called “getting high” for a reason.
You might think it enhances your thinking or creativity or spirituality, but in reality, it is bringing you into a less sober state of mind, one in which your ability to respond rapidly and critically is actually lessened. So, you might be more “creative,” but not in a holy and godly way.
Yet a recent headline on Christian Post announced, “XXXchurch Pastor Craig Gross promotes ‘Christian Cannabis,’ says weed makes it easier to worship.”
The pastor, Craig Gross, explained, “I’ve never lifted my hands in a worship service ever, ’cause I was raised Baptist. … I’ve done that in my bathroom worshiping with marijuana by myself.”
Ironically, it’s for this same reason that some strippers get high before performing or some actors have a few drinks before engaging in a sex scene. The drugs or drink loosen them up and relax them, helping to remove their inhibitions.
But this is the opposite of spiritual liberty. It has nothing to do with holiness, and it is totally unrelated to worship. (The real shame here is that Pastor Gross has fought against the use of porn for many years. Yet Christians who get high will find their ability to resist sexual sin lessened as well.)
Before I knew Jesus, I received incredible spiritual “revelations” while tripping on LSD or mescaline, especially when combined with huffing diesel gas. I even discovered the secret of the universe!
All of this was from below, not from above. All of this was deception.
We should also factor in that pot remains a gateway drug, opening the door to more serious drug abuse over time. Is it any surprise that Denver has now voted to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms after Colorado legalized cannabis in 2014?
Even if you never went beyond pot after years of personal use, the moment you advocate it, you open the door to others. Is that wise?
I’ve also been told repeatedly that pot today is not like the pot I once smoked. It’s much more potent and dangerous. And the very real, not exaggerated, dangers of marijuana use have been documented by Alex Berenson in his bestselling book Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence.
As the blurb states, this “eye-opening report from an award-winning author and former New York Times reporter reveals the link between teenage marijuana use and mental illness, and a hidden epidemic of violence caused by the drug — facts the media have ignored as the United States rushes to legalize cannabis.”
Bad roots will produce bad fruit. Just give things enough time.
According to a report from SF Gate, “With some marijuana products averaging 68 percent THC — exponentially greater than the pot baby boomers once smoked — calls to poison control centers and visits to emergency rooms have risen. In the Denver area, visits to Children’s Hospital Colorado facilities for treatment of cyclic vomiting, paranoia, psychosis and other acute cannabis-related symptoms jumped to 777 in 2015, from 161 in 2005.”
Significantly, “The increase was most notable in the years following legalization of medical sales in 2009 and retail use in 2014, according to a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health published in 2018.”
In the words of psychiatrist Libby Stuyt, who treats teens in southwestern Colorado and has studied the health impacts of high-potency marijuana, “Horrible things are happening to kids. I see increased problems with psychosis, with addiction, with suicide, with depression and anxiety.”
And while the effects on adults might not always be as extreme (or, as quickly noticed), it is clear that anything this harmful to teens can hardly be beneficial to adults.
Paul exhorted the believers in Ephesus, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18, ESV).
In the same way, he would urge us not to get high on drugs, but rather to be filled with the Spirit.
Of course, I’m quite aware that the response of many would be, “But that’s the whole point. Just as we can drink alcohol in moderation, we can smoke pot in moderation.”
My response would be 1) it’s an unnecessary crutch; 2) it still removes your full sobriety; 3) it opens the door to more intense pot use, along with the use of other drugs; 4) it creates another fleshly habit in your life.
For two years, day and night, my life centered on drugs and rock music, and I got as high as humanly possible without dying, once taking enough hallucinogenic drugs for 30 people. (I am only alive and in God’s service by His grace and mercy!) And in the months before coming to faith in Jesus, I smoked pot morning, noon, and night. It became a constant part of my life.
Yet when I truly experienced the joy of the Lord, which then revealed the depths of His love to me, I said to Him on the spot, “I will never put a needle in my arm again!” And I was free from that day (December 17, 1971) until today.
Two days after that, while smoking hash with friends, I realized that the Lord didn’t want me to get high in any way. And the rest is history.
So, before you get high (whether for the first time or again), ask yourself these questions: Is this light or darkness? Is this feeding my spirit or my flesh? Is this exalting Jesus or opening the door to the enemy?
Be wise, and sober, my friend. And be filled with the Holy Spirit. There is nothing like it. (Click to Source)
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By Liam Quinn | Fox News
Seattle’s homeless crisis has reached such catastrophic levels that a north-side cemetery has become home to drug abuse, drug dealing and prostitution.
Bikur Cholim Cemetery board member and city council candidate Ari Hoffman detailed the desperate effort to fight the epidemic and placed blame for how bad it has gotten squarely on the local government.
“The city council, city elected officials failed our city. They created a haven where it is OK for people to die on the streets through drug use, and to live on the streets people who have a mental illness,” Hoffman told “Fox & Friends.” “They are not offering treatment solutions, and they are failing us.
Hoffman added: “Through 2013, the homeless population was relatively stable. And then what happened after that is it grew… because the policies they had enabled drug use behavior. It’s just absolutely tragic that we have people who are living inside of a cemetery, that are dealing drugs outside of a cemetery, and are running prostitution in a cemetery, but you see it on the streets all over Seattle.”
Hoffman, who is running for city council, then took aim at “non-performing non-profits” for not doing enough to combat the crisis and revealed what he believes is the first step to turn back the tide.
“You have to wonder where the money goes, the first thing we need to do is audit where all that money is going. There’s plenty of money, the city’s coffers are full, the money is just not being spent appropriately,” he told “Fox & Friends.” “According to Seattle’s own numbers, 78 percent of people want to be off heroin. They don’t want to have addiction problems, they want treatment. Unfortunately there just aren’t enough services – there aren’t enough mental health options for them… we need to make sure those services are available for people on the streets.”
Groundskeepers frequently find trash and other debris at the cemetery. (Ari Hoffman)
Cemetery groundskeepers have had to deal with cleaning up everything from used needles to human feces, according to a representative. (Ari Hoffman)
Hoffman went on to paint a dire picture of the scene at the historic Bikur Cholim Cemetery.
“They find needles, they find drugs, they find human feces all over the place and they have to clean it all up,” he said. “Our grounds-crew has been pricked by needles before, they’ve been assaulted by people they found living there, they’ve found people on the ground overdosed thinking they were dead.”
Federal data released in 2018 found Washington state’s homeless population had risen more than any other state in the country.
Seattle, King County, had a homeless population of 12,112 — the third highest in the country behind Los Angeles and New York City. (Click to Source)
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By Stefan Stanford – All News Pipeline – Live Free Or Die
June 20, 2019
According to this incredibly sad June 12th story over at NBC News, death rates in America from suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol related causes have reached an all-time high here, with this new report released by the Commonwealth Fund examining data from all 50 US states finding the states of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania particularly hard hit.
Reporting that these so-called ‘deaths of despair‘ are exploding across the country with the rate of overdose deaths from drugs in West Virginia called ‘mind boggling‘, the NBC News story contained 3 different maps which we’ve put into this story, maps which show just how many people are dying from these preventable deaths and hinting that there are very few possible long lasting solutions to all of the different crisis our nation now faces: America’s return to God. Or the Return of Jesus.
As we had reported on ANP back in January of 2018, America has been suffering a huge spiritual vacuum as the masses turn away from God and have instead embraced evil and as the Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has warned numerous times that if the world continued upon the path that it is now on, the world was approaching ‘end times‘. First, from NBC news.
“When we look at what’s going on in mid-Atlantic states — West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania — those are the states that have the highest rates of drug overdose deaths in the country,” David Radley, a senior scientist for the Commonwealth Fund, said.
Rates in those states are at least double the national average of fatal drug overdose rates. West Virginia had the highest drug overdose death rates, fueled mostly by the opioid epidemic. What’s more, those rates rose by 450 percent from 2005 to 2017, according to the report.
“The rate of growth in drug overdose deaths in West Virginia is absolutely mind-boggling,” Radley told NBC News.
It’s not just prescription painkillers and heroin that are driving these death rates. The study authors also point to fentanyl and other potent synthetic opioids that are creeping into illicit drugs such as cocaine. Fentanylis similar to morphine, but 50 to 100 times more potent, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Following West Virginia, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Delaware and New Hampshire had the next highest drug overdose death rates in the country, according to the report.
Death rates from suicide and alcohol also showed regional disparities. People died at higher rates by suicide or from alcohol than from drugs in Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oregon and Wyoming.
Just a few months ago, I received one of those phone calls that one never wants to receive.
My mother was calling to let me know that a friend I had grown up with during the early 1980’s had passed away.
While I’ll always remember a huge number of us sitting around with ‘Ed‘, watching every Clint Eastwood movie ever created as Eastwood’s characters were the embodiment of who ‘Ed‘ wanted to be, I was further saddened to learn in the phone call with my mom that ‘Ed‘ had committed suicide, taken his own life at a time in America where our nation was suffering from record numbers of suicide all across the country. None of us would have ever seen it in ‘Ed‘.
Yet as Mac Slavo also reports in this new story over at SHTFPlan, America is now witnessing a massive surge in ‘deaths of despair‘; suicides, deaths from drugs and deaths due to alcohol, and as we’ll see in the excerpt below taken from his new story, all of this is happening at a time when the government had abandoned America, funnelling money away from the American people to themselves and putting trillions of dollars and great time and energy into creating their ‘global new world order‘. They’ve left the American people behind and this is what tens of millions have gotten in return.
In the United States, which is obviously not the happiest nation on Earth, Americans are committing suicide or “deaths of despair” in record numbers. There are many issues that can rightly take the blame, but lack of personal freedom and the manipulated economy are creating generations of hopelessness.
Feelings of hopelessness and despair are overwhelming many in the U.S. So much so, that people are turning to alcohol, drugs, and suicide to numb the pain of their lives. Government enslavement and the stranglehold on the economy are making life even more difficult on those already struggling to get by. And this is seen in new death numbers released.
According to a report by RT, the suicide rates among teens and young adults aged 15 to 24 (the older end of “Generation Z”) spiked in 2017, reaching their highest point since 2000, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). “Deaths of despair” have risen 51 percent in the past 10 years, buoyed by rising rates of anxiety and depression that comes along with social media use. Drug use, hopelessnesses, and a lack of free will are taking their toll on people. And the statistical figures may be even higher since some intentional drug overdoses are not counted as suicides.
The rise of millennial and Gen Z “deaths of despair” can be traced to the gap between reality and expectations. Raised on the myths of the American Dream and Freedom, these are the first Americans to experience a markedly lower standard of living than their parents and an increase in the authoritarian control on their lives. The Baby Boomers who grew prosperous on the fruits of the postwar economic boom had far more freedom and paid a loss in taxes that the newer generations, who have effectively sold their children and grandchildren into slavery.
Young people aren’t the only ones afflicted by suicide. Life expectancy nationwide is down for the third year in a row, and a report from Trust for America’s Health published last year projects that this “epidemic” – which they define as drug and alcohol deaths plus suicide – is on track to kill more than 1.6 million people by 2025 if it continues to grow at its current rate.
None of this will change until people are free to make their own decisions – including the bad ones – and the economy is no longer manipulated by the elitists who funnel money to themselves away from the masses.
As Fox News had reported back in April of 2017, America’s up and coming generation the Millennials are far less likely to hold religious beliefs than any other generation, with over 60% of that generation believing Christianity is too ‘judgemental‘ while 64% of Millennials claim that ‘anti-gay‘ was the best way to describe most churches in America today.
As FaithWire had reported back in April of 2019, while 77% of Americans believe that America is suffering from a ‘moral crisis‘ according to a Pew Research poll, Americans were still turning away from God in near record numbers. From their story.:
Our nation’s moral compass is spinning out of control, and it will only get worse as we continue to turn away from True North.
A recent survey from the Pew Research Center shows a stunning 77 percent of Americans are at least “fairly worried” about the country’s morals, with 43 percent describing themselves as “very worried.” But despite their concern, 50 percent of everyone surveyed said religion — the source of absolute truth and morality — will be “less important” in 30 years. Forty-three percent said faith will be equally important in 2050 as it is today.
The survey also showed 56 percent of Americans believe faith in God is not necessary to have good values and to be moral.
Interestingly, I think that number reveals something quite incredible: God’s general revelation and His imprint on humanity is so strong, we don’t even need to believe in Him to see His impact on the world. The problem, though, is the longer we separate truth — the absolute morality of right and wrong — from the source of all truth, the sooner our moral compass will come apart completely.
Yet as we had reported on ANP back on June 8th in this story titled “With The World Teetering At The Edge Of The Abyss, Nearly At The Point Of No Return, The Implementation Of The Globalists ‘Total Control’ System Is Ripping Out The Heart And Soul Of America“, with America’s smaller communities quite literally dying as the Survival Blog had reported in this June 19th story which Steve Quayle had linked to on his website Wednesday, America needs a ‘Revival‘ and there has never been a more important time than now for us to rise up and fight to restore America’s soul.
Back in January of 2018, we published this story on ANP titled “‘We Are On A Very Dangerous Path Of Self-Annihilation’ Warns Head Of Russian Orthodox Church: ‘If Evil Prevails, End Times Will Be Upon Us‘” within which we shared a dire warning from the Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, that the world was approaching ‘end times‘, largely due to the normalization and global acceptance of evil.
Patriarch Kirill warned back then that evil was driving away the good from society and while warning that the world was on a very dangerous path towards self-annihilation, he also said its the church’s duty to warn of what they see unfolding.
As Patriarch Kirill stated, never before have evil and righteousness been put upon the same level as we are witnessing now and the Patriarch issues this firm warning, “if evil prevails, the end times will be upon us.”
When asked about the apocalypse and if ‘the end is near’ and what would bring about such a scenario, Patriarch Kirill tells us “In the case when the human society stops to be viable, when the resources to exist will be exhausted which would happen in the case when we have absolute dominance of evil”. Warning us that evil is not viable and in cases where systems are taken over by evil, those systems will fall, Kirill continues “If evil drives away good from human society, then the end will come”.
When asked by the interviewer “why do we have to talk about this today?”, Patriarch Kirill replies “Because we are now living through a special period in history. Never before did human society put good and evil on the same level. There were attempts to justify evil but never to say that good and evil are relative and not absolute truths. People’s perception of good and evil was that they were absolute truth. But today they are relative. When can evil unrestrainedly grow in human society? EXACTLY when this point of view that good and evil are the same triumphs globally. And we are currently not at the beginning of this process but a certain amount of time has passed. History as we know it is exhausted, so how can the church keep silent? How can it avoid sending up an alarm? How can it avoid warning that we are on a very dangerous path of self-annihilation? If the church will not say this than who will?”
Yet, should we really even be surprised about all of these ‘deaths of despair‘ coming at a time when Western Civilization is itself committing ‘suicide‘ as we hear in the final video at the bottom of this story from Infowars? It’s clear that a huge spiritual vacuum has struck America and only America returning to God will get our nation out of the mess we’re in.
And with the mainstream media helping to push America into mass insanity with their lies and fake news triggering ‘Trump derangement syndrome‘ and great panic among many Democrats, should they be held responsible for the mass explosion of ‘deaths of despair‘ across America? Those who are still getting their news from the mainstream media, and believing their never-ending lies, are setting themselves up for a major fall ahead as truth finally comes to light.
In the first video below, videographer Martin Brodel talks with us about the soaring ‘deaths of despair‘ amongst ‘Generation Z‘ and the Millennials while the 2nd video below from the Wall Street Journal originally published back in February of 2018 warned that the growing number of ‘deaths of despair‘ were a very loud and clear warning sign for America, a warning we now see coming true before our eyes: America is on the edge of disaster.
Thursday, May 23, 2019 by: News Editors
(Natural News) According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a mass murder occurs when at least four people are murdered, not including the shooter, over a relatively short period of time during a single incident. Over the last 30 years, the United States has seen a significant increase in mass shootings, which are becoming more frequent and more deadly.
(Article republished from Ammo.com)
Seemingly every time a mass shooting occurs, whether it’s at a synagogue in Pittsburgh or a nightclub in Orlando, the anti-gun media and politicians have a knee-jerk response – they blame the tragedy solely on the tool used, namely firearms, and focus all of their proposed “solutions” on more laws, ignoring that the murderer already broke numerous laws when they committed their atrocity.
Facts matter when addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and more gun controllegislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are not the problem. Consider the following: The more gun control laws that are passed, the more mass murders have occurred.
Whether or not this is correlation or causation is debatable. What is not debatable is that this sick phenomenon of mass murderers targeting “gun-free zones,” where they know civilian carry isn’t available to law-abiding Americans, is happening. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, 97.8 percent of public shootings occur in “gun-free zones” – and “gun-free zones” are the epitome of the core philosophical tenant of gun control, that laws are all the defense one needs against violence.
Therefore, when the media and politicians focus their ire on guns, specifically what types of guns are used, such as AR-styles, carbines, semi-automatics, and “high capacity” handguns, in the wake of such tragedies the American public are being intentionally drawn into an emotionally charged debate about legal gun ownership (irrespective of whether the murderer’s gun was legally or illegally obtained). This debate leads them away from the elephant in the room and one of the real issues behind mass shootings – mental health and prescription drugs.
Ignoring what’s going on in the heads of these psychopaths not only allows mass shootings to continue, it leads to misguided gun control laws that violate the Second Amendment and negate the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens. As Jeff Snyder put it in The Washington Times:
“But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow.”
Violence, especially random violence, is a complex manifestation of various thoughts, feelings, and external factors. When a multivariate analysis of these factors is conducted, it becomes apparent that it’s not just mental health issues that are leading to such an increase. There may be an underlying substance which plays a role in a high percentage of these violent acts – the use of prescription antidepressants, specifically selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.
At first glance, it makes sense that those involved in mass shootings may be taking antidepressants, as they’re clearly suffering from some sort of mental health issue. But the issue with SSRIs runs much deeper than just a random mental health break. These drugs are a prescription for violent crimes, and that’s a story the anti-gun media and politicians don’t want to talk about.
To understand the rise in antidepressant use, one must first understand depression. Everyone, no matter how great their life, has periods of sadness, times when they feel down or low. This is especially true when faced with hardships or going through things like a divorce, the loss of a job, or the death of a parent.
This is not clinical depression. Clinical depression is a serious mental disorder that impacts how a person functions on a daily basis. Depression makes it hard to get out of bed. It makes it hard to go to work. It makes it hard to take a shower or answer the phone. It stops a person from functioning on the basic levels.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly referred to as the DSM-5, to be considered clinically depressed, a patient must experience five of the following symptoms most of the day, every day, for at least two weeks. What’s more, these symptoms must be so severe, they interfere with normal functioning:
Depression is a serious, and sometimes life-threatening, illness. But in the modern world, it’s highly over-diagnosed. A study published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics looked at 5,639 patients in the U.S. who were diagnosed with depression by their clinician and compared their symptoms to the DSM criteria for clinical depression. Of these patients, only 38.4 percent met the criteria, even though the majority of the 5,639 patients were prescribed depression medication.
Today, with the way antidepressants are prescribed, nearly one in four Americans will meet the criteria to be diagnosed with depression within their lifetime, and will be prescribed medications that interfere with how their brain functions.
In the 1950s, the first generation of antidepressants hit the market. The introductory class of antidepressants to gain Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval were monoamine oxidase inhibitors, known as MAOIs. Although highly effective, MAOIs can cause extremely high blood pressure when paired with certain foods or medications, and therefore require diet restrictions. Because of these restrictions, they’re rarely used today to treat depression except in cases where other treatments fail.
By the late 1950s, a new class of antidepressants became available – tricyclic antidepressants. Tricyclic antidepressants are also highly effective for treating depression, but are prone to side effects. Even so, this class of antidepressants remained the go-to depression treatment for years. Other drugs were tested for depression treatment, but they hadn’t proved more effective than tricyclic and MAOI antidepressants, especially for severe depression.
Fast forward to the 1980s. America’s tranquilizer dependence was becoming problematic. Quaaludes were heavily over-prescribed for anxiety, resulting in overdose deaths, as well as an increase in deaths from vehicle accidents. The Feds stepped in and in 1984, classified Quaaludes as a Schedule 1 drug, making them illegal to sell, buy, and use.
Valium, a benzodiazepine prescribed for anxiety, was also extremely popular, and was the most prescribed medication in the U.S. from 1969 through 1982. In 1978, the year the medication peaked, more than 2.3 billion pills were sold in the U.S. But Valium was highly addictive and it was believed that a serotonergic medication was a better option to fill the void that was left when Quaaludes were outlawed.
In 1987, Prozac, the first SSRI, was released for depression. Along with it came the idea that depression could be the underlying cause of anxiety. The idea took off, as did the sales of Prozac, and within a few years, it overtook the antidepressant market. Soon, other SSRIs followed.
Along with these SSRIs came direct-to-consumer advertising, which became legal in 1985. By the mid-1990s, the FDA regulations became looser and direct-to-consumer ads exploded into the market. Prozac and other medications showed Americans through glossy advertisements that unhappiness, stress, and anxiety could be treated with a pill.
Instead of doctors recommending a specific medication, patients started coming in, requesting a medication they saw in a magazine or on television.
SSRI sales skyrocketed.
By 2010, 11 percent of Americans over the age of 12 were prescribed an antidepressant, making it the third most prescribed medication, topped only by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen and naproxen. When looked at over time, there has been a 400-percent increase in antidepressant use from 1988 through 2008.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a class of drugs commonly referred to as SSRIs, are the most prescribed antidepressant in the United States. These second-generation antidepressants are marketed to doctors and patients as safe and effective, with relatively minimal side effects. SSRIs are designated to treat mild to moderate depression, as well as anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and bulimia nervosa.
SSRIs work to increase the amount of serotonin in the brain. A neurotransmitter that helps neurons communicate, serotonin is associated with many different body functions, but is best known for its influence on mood. Sometimes called “the happy chemical,” serotonin plays a role in a person’s happiness and general feelings of wellbeing.
Low levels of serotonin are linked to depression, although the relationship is not clear. Research has not determined if the low neurotransmitter level causes depression or if depression causes the level of serotonin to drop. It should also be noted that a large amount of serotonin, up to 90 percent, is produced in the gut and may be influenced by what a person eats and drinks.
SSRI medication does exactly what its name says. When two neurons communicate, one releases neurotransmitters, which causes the other neuron to react in a certain way. Because this is constantly going on, these chemicals are always present in the brain. To keep the brain’s chemical balance correct, neurons regulate the amount of neurotransmitters released by a process called reuptake, which involves the reabsorption of the chemical by a neuron.
For instance, if there’s a high level of serotonin, the neuron knows to release less through reuptake, keeping the level balanced. If levels of the neurotransmitter are low, reuptake tells the neurons to release more.
SSRIs inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, causing neurons to release more of the neurotransmitter, therefore increasing the amount of the chemical found in the brain.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a variety of SSRIs, including:
When it comes to effectiveness, SSRIs don’t appear to have an influence on those with moderate to severe depression, with virtually no improvementseen when comparing SSRI use to placebos. Instead of a popular drug with a high efficiency, modern SSRIs have become popular based on an effective marketing campaign and little more. (Click to Source)
Read more at: Ammo.com or PsychDrugWatch.com.
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These young men need the Gospel of Jesus to be free from Addiction
Lake County Judicial Court Drug Court Judge James Manley shares a laugh with Drug Court graduates and CSKT members, Bradley Cannon, 22, and Dale Joseph of Elmo. Graduates completed the yearlong day-to-day program. “It was hard in the beginning,” said Joseph. He added that the past four months got easier. “I’m so happy now. I didn’t really think I’d do this.” Joseph was proud to announce he received his driver’s license a week before graduation. His plan is to complete his HiSet test and work for the Tribes. Cannon said he kept his mind set on “not giving up” and praises the support he got from the program team and his family. “The counselors really cared,” said Cannon. The next step for him is to get a job wild land firefighting. (Click to Source)
Monday, May 20, 2019 by: S.D. Wells
(Natural News) When a medical doctor prescribes drugs for symptoms, those warning signs may “go away” for a short while, but the root of the problem always festers. That’s because nearly all medications are chemically concocted in a laboratory and then “assigned” to bad health symptoms, and are doing nothing more than sweeping the “dust” and “germs” of serious problems “under the rug.”
Sooner or later, those real health issues will rear their ugly heads, and the next piece of advice won’t be so non-invasive, my friends, because after the prescription drugs fail you comes surgery and/or chemotherapy, psychotropic drugs, and eventually, if you live and can suffer long enough through all that, dementia sets in. That’s the final “financial” and mental avalanche.
The AMA (American Medical Association) has been making sure, in America, for 100 years, that medical doctors offer zero nutritional advice to their patients, and only prescribe “medications” that are laboratory created. This ensures any person with chronic health conditions will not ever recover, and become a client for life (a shortened life at that). That was the end game from the very beginning, and the FDA and CDC play right into that arena like a tri-fecta of partners in crime.
Half the country takes at least one of pharma’s “prescription” poisons daily. Did you know? That includes one in every five children. If ANY of those drugs really worked, wouldn’t THEY be the healthy half? Think about that real hard for a minute, after you mute the commercial on TV that says the side effects are worse than the condition being treated. That’s hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on drugs that don’t work. Wow.
Notice how they turn up the commercials on TV so you can hear them from the kitchen while you’re eating that genetically mutated food, drinking that tap water, and wondering why your other medications aren’t working, even though you take them exactly “as prescribed.”
Wait, the cholesterol medications is just quack remedy? What’s that – your heart medication is making you dizzy? So you’re saying the blood thinner can cause you to die of internal bleeding if you simply bump your head? That’s not “natural.”
Your M.D. is a snake oil salesman. A huckster. A con artist. A shill. He knows that lab-concocted junk isn’t going to cure you. That’s why Allopath only checks your symptoms and conditions, but never questions what you ate the past day, month, or year.
Why is it that nearly all people who don’t take pharmaceuticals ARE healthy, or at least in much better “condition” than those who do? Pharma “users” are involuntary abusers, and they never get cured of anything. Oh the irony.
Some acute health conditions do require “Western” medicine’s help, but those cases are literally rare when you look at the statistics. Nature provides antibiotics. Nature provides anti-viral “serum.” Nature provides immune system boosters. You can even beat the flu with things like oil of oregano, but no M.D. in America can ever say that, or the AMA will “remove” them from their station.
Sure, there are situations that require high-strength pain killers, anesthesia during operations, antibiotics for critical-stages of bacterial infections, and a handful more situations, but those are always acute illnesses. Even infectious diseases are better treated with natural remedies, and it’s obvious from the propaganda the vax-fanatics spread and spew in their “herds” of desperation and narrative-based fear.
Then there’s opioid abuse. Those long-term health crises include depressed breathing, which eventually just becomes cessation of breathing, which then gets termed “overdose” by the CDC and FDA. Can you say financial settlement and media blackout?
Opioid addicts discover their dependence (even in the brain) and tolerance for the drugs happens in just days after beginning the “cycle” the quack doctor recommended “just for you.” Your pill-pusher is a good actor. She/he’s very “nice.”
Anti-anxiety medications and depression medications are no different. Neither are stimulant meds. They all breed dependence, tolerance, and eventually, total uselessness. Actually, beyond useless, because the prescription drugs do REAL chronic health damage all while decreasing any effectiveness they may have once had.
From statin drugs to asthma meds, and from anti-depressants to amphetamines for kids, American medicine is the worst on the planet, and it’s planned that way. The only reason 150 million Americans still take them is they’re too dumbed-down and sick to figure it out now. We’re a nation of “prescribed” druggies. The kids and the seniors are doped to the max. Americans have lost their “drive” or spirit to work, to save money, to create, to run their own business, to stay prepared, to seek longevity. But not all of us. You have the choice to be healthy. You really do. You have complete control.
Tune in to NaturalCures.news for updates on the most powerful superfoods on the planet that will cure you of all these preventable ills, and you can help us expose the long-term health detriment being spoon-fed to America under the guise of “medicine.” (Click to Source)
Sources for this article include:
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By Mac Slavo
Sleeping drugs such as Ambien have been making people kill themselves in their sleep, says the Food and Drug Administration. Drugs that supposedly help people sleep are linked to falls, burns, poisoning, limb loss, drowning, and even suicide.
According to The New York Times, this could all be solved by adding warning labels to the bottles of the pills instead of people trying to get off Big Pharma’s drugs.
Incidents related to sleeping pills have included “accidental overdoses, falls, burns, near drowning, exposure to extreme cold temperatures leading to loss of limb, carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, hypothermia, motor vehicle collisions with the patient driving, and self-injuries such as gunshot wounds and apparent suicide attempts,” according to the FDA’s own research. But rather than tell people not to use such drugs, the FDA simply wants people to know they could kill themselves after taking the pills.
The FDA announced Tuesday that a prominent warning would be required on all medication guides for Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, and the generic version of Ambien, which is called zolpidem. The FDA also mandates a separate warning against prescribing the drugs to anyone with a history of sleepwalking. –Futurism.
That’s a lovely side effect…
“Patients usually did not remember these events,” the agency wrote, according to Futurism. Bizarre actions have been widely reported after using sleeping pills, and the FDA has warned about this in the past – 12 years ago, in fact. That means this isn’t exactly new information. Big Pharma’s drugs have been problematic for quite some time now, but it is comforting to see others take note of just how disastrous some of these medications can be to humanity.
Some have expressed their surprise at the FDA’s admission that these pills may not be all that safe for people to use. “I am surprised to see this warning come out now,” University of Pennsylvania physician Ilene Rosen told The NYT.
This is something I’ve been telling my patients for the last 15 years, and in the sleep community, this is well known. And I’d like to think we’ve done a good job putting the news out there, that these drugs have some risks.
But all drugs have risks; hopefully, people will begin to realize that medications simply treat the symptom not the underlying problem that caused the issue to begin with. Western medicine is about management, not treatment. And it isn’t just Ambien and sleeping drugs humanity should be worried about; it’s all the drugs pushed on the public every single day.
Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is great at explaining the dilemma we as a society have found ourselves in. We like to imagine that regulators have some code of ethics and let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. This book shows the true scale of this murderous disaster. Goldacre believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct in the medical industry affects us on a global scale. (Click to Source)
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Imagine you’re looking around at a bustling city square, complete with shopkeepers and heavy foot traffic. But swirling jewel tones cover the ground, a muted haze flows through the air, and flowing, bulbous images of dogs and birds are attached to the people passing by. You know you’re neither dreaming nor drunk. It’s entirely possible, thanks to new research, that you’re hooked up to the “Hallucination Machine.”
The Hallucination Machine was built by a team researchers from the Sussex University’s Sackler Center for Conscious Science, including the center’s co-founder, neuroscientist Anil Seth, Ph.D. In a paper published Wednesday in Scientific Reports, Seth and his colleagues explain they created the Hallucination Machine as a means to study the mechanisms underlying altered states of consciousness without needing to use psychedelic drugs. This tool, they claim, is like a drug in its ability to make people feel like they are hallucinating.
Creating this altered state in human subjects, they explain, is tricky. Typically, people reach altered states because of psychopathological conditions or psychoactive substances, like LSD and psilocybin. Scientists have induced altered states in study participants with these drugs before to study the neural underpinnings at play, but the process is far from perfect. The Sussex University team explains that, because psychedelics have many physiological effects, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s changing in terms of consciousness.
With the Hallucination Machine, the researchers write, they are able to “simulate visual hallucinatory experiences in a biologically plausible and ecologically valid way.” The tool, which, unlike a drug, does not directly alter the person’s neurophysiology, combines virtual reality and machine learning. When a person wears it, they are immersed in “hallucinations” by watching 360-degree panoramic videos of video scenes with a VR head-mounted display. These videos are modified with an algorithm called Deep Dream, a computer program created by Google engineer Alexander Mordvintsev that modifies natural images to reflect images categorized by a neural network.
Deep Dream happens to insert a lot of images of dogs into the video, but researchers aren’t quite sure why. “One thing people always ask us is why there are so many dogs,” co-author David Schwartzman, Ph.D., told The Times on Monday.
“The short answer is we don’t know.”
In their study, the researchers used two experiments to demonstrate that the Hallucination Machine creates “visual phenomenology” — hallucinations — similar to those induced classical psychedelics. In the first, 12 participants used the machine, experienced the trippy VR, and then were asked how the experience altered from watching normal videos and being on a psychedelic drug. The participants overwhelmingly reported the experience was much different than watching a control video but qualitatively similar to being on drugs, especially psilocybin.
In the second experiment, 22 participants used the Hallucination Machine and then watched a control video. As they watched each video, they completed a task to test their perception of the passing of time. Neither using the Hallucination Machine nor watching the video caused temporal distortion. This was an important discovery, the researchers point out, because in previous studies on altered states of consciousness in which people did take drugs, they reported being confused about the passing of time. The new observations suggest to the researchers that it’s not being in an altered state that causes temporal distortion, it’s the drugs.
Examining the brain in an altered state of consciousness is important to scientists who are still are seeking to understand the biological basis of consciousness as a whole. A major hurdle to this area of study has been the use of and accessibility to psychedelic drugs. The Hallucination Machine may change this, and in turn, allow us to learn more about the unknown ways our minds can perceive ourselves and the world. (Click to Source)
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DEA tracked every opioid pill sold in the US.
And the results are horrific.
Between 2006 and 2012, 3 opioid drug makers and 6 distributors flooded the country with 76 billion pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone.
These highly addictive opioid pain medications that sparked the epidemic of abuse and overdoses that killed nearly 100,000 people in that time period.
As the epidemic surged over the seven-year period, so did the supply. The companies increased distribution from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012, a jump of roughly 50%.
In all, the deluge of pills was enough to supply every adult and child in the country with around 36 opioid pills per year.
Just a 10-day supply can hook 1 in 5 people into being long-term users, researchers have determined.
The stunning supply figures were first reported by the Washington Post and come from part of a database compiled by the Drug Enforcement Administration that tracked the fate of every opioid pill sold in America, from manufacturers to individual pharmacies.
A federal court in Ohio released the data this week as part of a massive consolidated court case against nearly two-dozen opioid makers and distributors, brought by nearly 2,000 cities, towns, and counties. The local governments allege that the opioid companies conspired to saturate the country with the potent painkillers to soak up billions in profits. The companies deny the allegations, arguing generally that they were serving the needs of patients.
According to an analysis of the data by the Post, just three companies made 88% of the opioid pills: SpecGx, Actavis Pharma, and Par Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Endo Pharmaceuticals. Purdue Pharma ranked fourth, making 3% of the pills. Just six companies distributed 75% of the pills: McKesson Corp., Walgreens, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, CVS, and Walmart.
The Post also noted that the distribution was concentrated in certain places, finding that West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Nevada had the top pill-per-person-per-year rates of all states, ranging from 66.5 to 54.7. West Virginia, which had the highest distribution rate, also had the highest opioid death rate during this period.
But certain rural areas were also hard hit, with Norton, Virginia, receiving 306 pills per person per year and Mingo County, West Virginia, receiving 203.
While the local governments suing the companies have had access to this data during the litigation, it was only released to the public after the Washington Post and HD Media, publisher of the Charleston Gazette-Mail of West Virginia, sued and waged a year-long legal battle. The drug companies had fought to keep the data hidden from the public, arguing that it revealed “transactional data” that could be used by competitors. The Department of Justice also argued against the release, saying it could compromise investigations.
A three-judge panel sided with the media organizations last month. This past Monday, US District Judge Dan Polster removed a protective order allowing the release of part of the DEA’s database, called Automation of Reports and Consolidated Order System, or ARCOS. Data from years beyond 2012 are still being withheld to protect the companies and DOJ investigations.
From 1999 to 2017, nearly 400,000 people in the US died from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Just three drug makers and six distributors were behind the flood. And I am sure you know people that were dramatically hurt by this epidemic. Killing for billions of dollars. A terrifying evidence of today’s pharmaceutical companies. (Click to Source)