I got this email today and it made me smile! I would have been there if I lived in south Florida. Looks like they did a good job without me.

The first BAN OXYCONTIN rally was a HUGE SUCCESS. We urge all of you to have a rally in your towns and cities. We reached tens of thousands of people in the Tampa Bay Area and just think how many millions of people we could reach if everyone of you had a rally in your hometown. WE HAVE TO LET AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE KNOW THE DANGERS OF THIS DRUG!!!!

It was a beautiful April day and a group of around 40 people or more from all over the country gathered in front of a Tampa, Florida Pain Clinic for Florida's first "Ban OxyContin Rally." Most of the people that were protesting were relatives or friends of people who had either died from this drug or had been addicted. Many carried signs with pictures of their loved ones that had died. We were located on a very busy corner across the street from the University of South Florida and we had numerous motorists honking their horns in agreement with our "Ban OxyContin" signs. We also had pedestrians and motorists stop and ask questions concerning the dangers of OxyContin. Television news teams covered the rally bringing the message to tens of thousands of Bay Area viewers.

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/news/local/hillsborough/0401-protesters-say-oxycontin-is-too-strong

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/health/doctor %20jo/0331-dr-jo-should-oxycontin-be-banned

We MUST respond to this EXTREMELY harmful and prejudicial article! ESPECIALLY if you live anywhere in PA, but even if you don't--please write to this journalist and protest this extremely inflammatory and inaccurate portrayal of methadone treatment. Contact info is at the end of the article. This is completely unacceptable.









Methadone gets its own beat on Girard Ave



Hayden Mitman

Star Staff





On a sunny morning last week, a patient from a methadone clinic in the Girard Medical Center stumbled down Girard Avenue.



He was dressed in a thick leather coat, heavy for the warm weather, and his movements were erratic.



He lurched, his feet moved at irregular starts and stops, his weight unsteady on his feet as he headed toward the Ramonita de Rodriguez Branch of the Philadelphia Free Library at 6th Street and Girard Avenue.



It was too early, and the library was closed. The man leaned against the building, his head nodded as if he were having trouble staying awake.



"Look at this one," said Officer James Bacon of the 26th Police District as the man joined two women in a conversation while they leaned against the library's facade.



It's a sight Officer Bacon, familiar with this particular patient, sees every day.



For the past year, Bacon, 59 - an officer with 22 years on the force - has been assigned a special beat through the district.



It's Bacon's job to monitor daily activity that occurs around the Goldman Methadone Clinic at the Girard Medical Center at the intersection of 8th Street and Girard Avenue.



And it keeps him busy.



Seven days a week, more than 700 patients from all over the city visit the clinic to obtain doses of methadone - a drug prescribed to those addicted to heroin and… Continue

Yesterday local paper reported about the arrest of 46 people in a small county south of here for bringing Oxycotin pills to Tennessee from Florida. They buy them at a pain clinic while "pill shopping" and return with as many three bottle of pain pills with a street value of over $10,000.00. Read the article here if you like.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/feb/19/rockwood-police-rounding-suspects-pain-pill-probe/

If there is one person currently on my list of people I can do without it's Drew Pinsky. For anyone who does not know, he is a celebrity hound doctor working in LA who specializes in addiction treatment (though I believe his actual area of specialization is Internal Medicine) and gets his ego fed by hobnobbing with drug abusing celebs. He used to give out sex advice on a radio show called "Loveline" and now he runs D list celebrities through a 21 day rehab on television in a show called "Celebrity Rehab" on VH-1. He has has three or four seasons of this trainwreck, and has also done a series called "Sober House" about the celebs in a halfway house, and yet another series called "Sex Rehab" where he tries to rehabilitate sex addicts, and so on.



Now to my point--Dr Drew is, in my personal opinion, loathsomely unethical, not to mention hideously negligent in patient care. Dr Drew has made it abundantly clear, in his website, TV shows, and his book, that he is a whole-hog 12 steps devotee and that he believes that NO ONE can recover from addiction without them. In fact, he stated on his website that he knew of NO ONE who ever had recovered without them. That kind of gross misstatement alone is heinous--even Bill Wilson knew that the 12 steps did not work for quite a few people, and he stated to the founder of methadone treatment that he wished they could develop an "analogue of methadone" for alcoholics, so that more people could find recovery. But not Dr Drew.



Dr drew is, in fact, 100% ANTI methadone treatment. Now, of course it is his right to have his own opinion about that. However, the advice and statements he makes to his patients evidence a strong prejudice founded NOT on science and evidence but on nonsense and ignorance.



For example, this season he has a patient who came to the show as a current methadone patient who had been taking 100mgs a day for six years. During this time, he had continued to abuse amphetamines/crack--as… Continue

I update it almost every day. Its about my journey through my son's heroin addiction.

Click the link above to get to my blog.

I am a 45 year old married mom of 3, and I am a methadone maintenance patient. I have been on MMT going on 6 years now and it has saved my life!