An article EVERYBODY needs to read..

[CHS_CG]

This young lady who is 17 or 18 now is a really good friend of mine and she has put her story out there to make other kids aware of what will happen to you:

Prescription Drug Roulette
When she was 14, Amanda Wiederhold had the last of four sinus surgeries. The best part, says the aspiring musician: "I got pain pills every time." She took some of the pills for her pain and brought the rest, along with some medications she'd stolen from her mom, to parties at her friends' houses. There, she and her pals would get high on those and other prescription drugs.
Forget BYOB. For some teenagers, parties today are of the bring-your-own-pills variety. Amanda and her friends brought whatever they could get their hands on: Vicodin, Percocet, Percodan, OxyContin and other painkillers; antianxiety medications like Xanax; stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin; and over-the-counter drugs. Then they began the dangerous game of prescription drug roulette.

These gatherings are called pharming parties, and they can be deadly. They're taking place in living rooms and basements across the country. At some parties, the kids toss their pharmaceutical offerings into a communal bowl, grab an assortment as if the pills were Skittles and knock them back, usually with alcohol. At others, like the ones Amanda attended, it's more organized, with bartering and negotiations, says Tom Hedrick, a founder of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. "Someone will say, 'I have X, which is harder to get. You'll have to give me three of what you have to get one of what I have.'"
Alarming New Trend
The abuse of prescription drugs, a practice known as pharming (short for pharmaceutical), is rampant among middle and high school students. According to a 2005 report from Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), 2.3 million kids ages 12 to 17 abused prescription drugs in 2003.

"What's frightening is that so many kids are doing it," says Hedrick. "And parents are unaware." This problem isn't on their radar. But it should be: A National Institute on Drug Abuse survey estimates that there's been a 25 percent increase each year since 2001 in the use of sedatives and barbiturates among high school seniors.

Jim Steinhagen, executive director of the Hazelden Center for Youth and Families, a drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation center in Plymouth, Minnesota, blames technology, in part, for the speed at which these parties have gotten so popular. "They've become the cool thing to do," he says. "They've caught on because kids communicate that to each other. And passing along information is easier with chat rooms, text messaging and the Internet."

In Caldwell, Texas, Amanda's hometown, a farming community of 3,500, pharming parties often take place in the cocoon of a traditional gathering. "We'd mingle and then at some time we'd go off to the side," Amanda recalls. "We'd go outside and open up our little plastic bags and share pills. I didn't always know what I was taking." But she didn't care.

Kids aren't looking for any specific medication. "Conventional wisdom used to be that it was an OxyContin problem," says Hedrick. "We now know that it has nothing to do with the brand. The newer the product, the more interesting. Kids will take it and figure out how to mix it with other things to get a different kind of high."

Steinhagen agrees: "They want to know how they can get high quicker, faster, what's the best buzz?" That's why they combine the drugs with one another and with alcohol and illegal drugs such as marijuana -- sometimes with fatal results.

(cont)

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Deadly Doses
Just ask Roger Stone. Last winter, Stone, a fire captain in Olympia, Washington, lost his 18-year-old son, Tyler, to a lethal combination of beer and methadone, a prescription narcotic. Tyler called his parents at 10:30 one night and said he was staying with friends. It was the last time his parents spoke to their son.

Tyler's friends found him unconscious the next morning. They rushed him to the hospital, where he went into cardiac arrest and died.

Prescription drugs are pretty safe when used correctly. But kids take risks. An example: OxyContin. As prescribed, it's a perfectly legitimate pain medication, says A. Thomas McLellan, PhD, director of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. As the pill dissolves, it gradually releases its payload, for long-lasting relief. But teens will often crush the pill before ingesting it, releasing all the medication at once. "One pill could lead to overdose," says McLellan.

Even worse, kids rarely take just one pill. Many of the drugs at pharming parties are depressants, which slow down brain function, says Glen Hanson, PhD, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Utah and former acting director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Now add alcohol, another depressant, to the mix. "All decrease brain activity, and they enhance one another." So a Vicodin-Ambien-Xanax-booze combination can be extremely dangerous. "It can do more than put you to sleep," says Hanson. "You can be put to sleep permanently."

If you combine depressants with stimulants, on the other hand, heartbeat, blood pressure and other systems in the body will start careening up and down. "And the heart doesn't like that," says Hanson. "When you start pushing it around, there could be the danger of arrhythmia. It could progress to a point where the heart is working inefficiently, and then you may have trouble. Things may start collapsing."

Doctors are also concerned that adolescents are taking these drugs while their brains are still forming. "These kids are in a fairly critical stage of brain development," says Hanson. Their decision-making skills are being honed. "And when you disturb that with pharmacology over and over again, the brain may not reach its capacity and may not mature fully. Their ability to make decisions and process information will be compromised, maybe for the rest of their lives."

Why Prescription Drugs?
"About five million school-age children take a prescription drug every day for some sort of behavior disorder," says Carol Falkowski, director of research communications at the Hazelden Foundation. "As a result, kids learn at an early age that if you take a pill, you get a mood change."

And many teens view pharming as safe, since the drugs are of pharmaceutical quality, says Steinhagen. "But that's a frightening myth that can have fatal consequences."

Of course, over-the-counter drugs are also welcome at pharming parties. Kids abuse cold medications made with dextromethorphan, or DXM. Instead of the one or two pills recommended, they'll take two to three boxes' worth at a time, to create a drug-induced psychosis, says Steinhagen.


Where Kids Get the Pills
If they don't have a prescription, teens pan their parents' medicine cabinets and the cabinets at their friends' houses. And they're striking gold online, where they can easily get OxyContin, Xanax, Ritalin and other drugs. According to CASA, 89 percent of websites selling controlled pharmaceuticals have no prescription requirements. "We've found that there is no attempt to block sales to children," says Susan Foster, CASA vice president and director of policy research.

What About the Parents?
Like most parents, Amanda's had no idea that their child was addicted. When parents find out that their kids are abusing prescription drugs, "most breathe a sigh of relief," says Hedrick. "They think, Oh, at least my kid isn't smoking pot or doing heroin."

But prescription drugs can be more potent than street drugs. "One in ten 12th graders admits to using Vicodin at least once in the last year," says McLellan. "If I said one in ten kids is using heroin, people would go through the roof." But while heroin sold on the street might be 10 to 40 percent opiate, pharmaceutical-grade Vicodin could be ten times more powerful an opiate than heroin.

Spiraling out of Control
Amanda took whatever pills she could get, largely because she was finding life hard to take. "There were a lot of issues," she says. She had just found out that her parents were splitting. It took her by surprise -- and she was devastated. "I had no clue. I woke up one morning, and they told me."

On a few occasions during her two years of going to pharming parties, Amanda had what she calls a scare. "My heart would race so fast it felt like it was going to explode. Sometimes I felt woozy and I would pass out," she recalls. "But I had a lot of pride in my drinking and drugging. I was really passionate about it and proud of the fact that I could take more than a lot of people. I could come home and have a conversation with my parents."

Eventually, though, things got out of control. "I couldn't go a day without taking something," she recalls, "and after a while, the pills messed up my stomach; it hurt all the time, and I hardly ate. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I went to my parents and told them I needed help."

Amanda entered a residential treatment program and has been sober since her release last January. "Detox was the worst four days of my entire life," she says. "I didn't think a kid could have any withdrawal symptoms, but I was puking and had the shakes."

She's no longer cavalier about drugs. "I'm so scarred from this," says Amanda, who has ulcers and damaged kidneys from the drugs and alcohol. "I have to struggle daily to stay sober. But in some ways, I feel lucky I went through it, and I'm out of it now."

Before signing in to the treatment program, Amanda, who is now 17, wrote a song called "Goodnight to the Moonlight." Her lyrics: "I'm starting to lose sight of all the things that've made me who I am/Or the will to want to or even think that I can." Amanda says, "It's about how it feels to be taking drugs and alcohol, how it hurts, how it makes you feel like you're losing yourself.

"I want people who are getting into drugs to know how bad it can get and to let them know there's a way out."

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as I said before Mandy is a very good friend of mine. I knew she was drinking a lot but never knew about the pills. I remember her telling me her kidneys shut down in Rehab. She told us all how horrible it was and its not something i wish on anybody. If there is one thing I am thankful for its that my mother always asks me where I am goin b4 I leave and always has me check in once in a while with her, she always wanted to know where i was goin, who i was goin with and when i would be home.

this is mandy's myspace page if anybody would like to look at it. her song to Goodnight to the moonlight is on there.

[coachc45]

Lost my nephew in July to alcohol and methadone.

17 year old kid. It is a tragedy what these kids are doing

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Originally posted by coachc45
Lost my nephew in July to alcohol and methadone.

17 year old kid. It is a tragedy what these kids are doing

I agree, some kids are to scared to ask for help and Mandy was at first but she knew she had all of our support and we stood behind her and she asked for help and luckly God was there behind her and helped her through it. She is doing great now.. her kidneys still hurt her every once in a while and her stomach is still tore up but she is doing really good considering the state that she was in before!

[luvhoops34]

And to think all we used to have to worry about was keg parties and a little pot smoking....