Narconon Suncoast Rehab Center Gives Prescription Oxycontin Abuse Warning Signs

Narconon Suncoast Rehab Center, Executive Director Tammy Strickling, reports approximately 80 percent of their clients over the last 6 months were addicted to one opiate or another with 60 to 70 percent of them on Oxycontin or its cousin Roxycodone. Oxycontin or Roxycodone are the most abused prescription drug they treat at their center.

“Those concerned that their loved one may be addicted to Oxycontin should look for any of these signs:  pale in color, nodding off, low energy, sometimes scratching the body, sweating, and pinned pupils,” says Strickling, Executive Director Narconon Suncoast Rehab Center.

Strickling goes on to say, “Most Narconon Suncoast clients say they first recognize that they are addicted when they miss a dose or run out of a prescription and the withdraw process starts. It becomes so painful they go get more pills.”

The physical dependency occurs when the body develops a tolerance for the prescribed dose and then needs a higher and higher level to get the same result.  The addiction is when one starts to abuse the prescribed amount, such as taking all doses before noon or doubling their dose and then doing anything to get more.

Doing “anything” to get more often translates into hitting the street to buy another dose, adding other drugs to the mix, stealing money to buy more on the street or worse. Narconon Suncoast counselors have heard it all including the “worse” as they help clients get clean with the Narconon drug-free rehabilitation program.

Strickling goes on to educate saying the original use of Oxycontin was for cancer and severe pain.  It was medically listed as a second alternative to morphine and was a blessing.  It was later reclassified and approved for moderate to severe pain making it extremely easy to get.

“Who doesn’t have moderate pain now and then?” asks Strickling. “Combine that with the unethical over prescription of the drug and a lack of drug monitoring or regulatory oversight and today we have an epidemic.  Now that OxyContin has become so available, it is today more popular than heroin but far more painful and difficult to stop. We see it every day at Narconon Suncoast.

Further information to support the client percentages Narconon Suncoast is seeing can be found in data from a CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) review, from 1997 to 2004, reporting that there was a 556% increase in the sales of oxycodone, a 500% increase in therapeutic grams of oxycodone used, and a 568% increase in the non-medical use of Oxycontin.  In Florida alone, the death rate attributed to overdose of the prescription drug, oxycodone is up over 264% between 2003-2009.

Narconon Suncoast Rehab Center (SRC) is located in Spring Hill, Fl.  The three-acre campus is a peaceful, comfortable and casual retreat aimed at healing with a 76% success rate among their program graduates.  SRC doesn’t share the belief “once an addict, always an addict.”  They believe anyone can be helped to overcome their addiction for good.  Their intensive program addresses the physical and mental aspects of the addiction and gets to the source – the real problem – that led to drug use in the first place.  They believe the drug and alcohol problem is only a symptom of the true problem, not the problem itself.  They get to the bottom of it and return a person who can live a happy, successful life without drugs.  For more information visit their website at http://www.suncoastrehabcenter.com  or call 800-511-9403.