The problem isn't just with opiates. Several years ago a breathing
medication that I had taken for years was discontinued as a result of the
increased regulation of ephedrine in Sudafed and other drugs. As a result of
the regulation the manufacturer decided to discontinue the product. After a
few years of scrounging different pharmacies for it as well as on line the
supply was gone. Now I'm having to rely on less effective medications, my
respiratory and sinus issues have gotten worse and I am now needing to have
surgery to correct sinus damage that has gone back to childhood as the
effects of available medication aren't working. I'm at the point now that I
think that all drugs should be legalized and people along with or without
their doctors can decide for themselves. I also wonder what additional
medical research might have been done if we had a more open attitude toward
individual uses of drugs as needed as much research is not pursued because
it isn't popular in some circles.
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2016 12:46 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] I'm Dependent on Narcotics; That Doesn't Mean I'm
an Addict
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > I'm Dependent on Narcotics; That Doesn't Mean I'm an Addict
________________________________________
I'm Dependent on Narcotics; That Doesn't Mean I'm an Addict
By Ellen Painter Dollar [1] / Salon [2]
January 18, 2016
I started taking opioid painkillers not long after my third and last child
was born. Despite having had nearly four dozen broken bones in childhood due
to a genetic bone disorder (osteogenesis imperfecta or OI), I struggled
little with pain or functional limitations in my young adulthood. I limped
and tired easily, but every day I climbed up and down stairs, cleaned and
cooked, walked with a baby or two in a stroller to do errands, and cared for
my young children without any more severe consequence than sore muscles and
joints at bedtime.
But around the time my son was born, things started, literally, to fall
apart. Eight months pregnant, I sustained a meniscal tear in my left knee
that would ultimately be surgically repaired twice but never really fixed.
Today, at 47 years old, I have no cartilage left in either knee; sometimes
when I change position, the joints emit an audible crunch. A stress fracture
in my femur has bothered me on and off for a year. My orthopedist reports
that the balls of my hip joints are embedding themselves in the too-soft
bone of my pelvic sockets. My right wrist aches and throbs at night,
particularly if I did a lot of writing or housecleaning that day.
To continue to climb up and down stairs, clean and cook, do my work, and
care for my family, I rely on long-acting opioids, combined with high doses
of Vitamin D, ibuprofen, hot baths, low-impact exercise (especially
swimming), a produce-heavy anti-inflammatory diet, and rest.
In the years that I've been using opioids, their use has become more
restricted and controversial. A surge in heroin addiction and overdose is
directly related to painkiller abuse. People get hooked on the Vicodin or
Percocet prescribed after surgery or an injury. When they find that buying
pills on the street is prohibitively expensive, they turn to heroin, which
gives the same high for a much lower price. Recently, a study by Nobel
Prize-winning economists of startlingly high death rates for white,
high-school-educated, middle-aged Americans concluded that this trend is
linked to substance abuse and addiction, including opioid abuse and
alcoholism. Meanwhile, few data are available defining to what extent and in
what doses and formulations opioids are effective in treating chronic pain,
and opioids are likely not the right treatment for many chronic pain
patients. Research further verifies that doctors perceive chronic pain
patients as among the most time-consuming and difficult patients to treat.
In a recent Boston Globe Op-Ed, Judy Foreman related this anecdote: When
professors at one medical school asked graduating medical students what they
would do when faced by a pain patient, one student spoke for many: "Run!"
While opioids may not be the right treatment for all, or even most, chronic
pain patients, these medications work well for me with few side effects. The
simple fact that I've found an effective treatment allowing me to live an
active life with significant disability, however, is obscured by the
controversy, fear, stigma and caution that surround opioid prescribing.
Getting my medication has become steadily more difficult-a development I'd
find easier to accommodate if it didn't come packaged with shame and fear
that stricter prescribing rules, and practitioners weary of following those
rules while second-guessing patient intentions, might ultimately mean that I
can't get this medication at all. I've begun preempting such a situation by
proactively tapering down my prescription painkillers, and may ultimately go
off them altogether.
Several months ago, I had to call my doctor's office four times and the
pharmacy three times in a matter of hours (during my workday) to get my
prescription filled. My doctor's less-than-pristine handwriting made the
pharmacy-where I've had my prescriptions, prescribed by the same doctor,
filled for about six years-suspicious that the prescription had been
tampered with, so they wanted to call the doctor's office to verify it. My
doctor's medical assistant left for the day at noon without returning the
pharmacy's call. Having taken my last pill of the previous prescription that
morning, I knew that if I didn't get the prescription filled that day, I'd
be up all night with pain and the effects of opioid withdrawal. With each
call I made, the anxiety and urgency in my voice ticked upward. Another of
my doctor's staff members eventually verified the prescription so I could
get it filled. The pharmacist was angry about so much time spent on a single
prescription. My doctor's staff member was annoyed that she had to step in
to do a job that wasn't hers. I got my prescription, and I also got a hefty
dose of shame that I have become the anxious and demanding time-suck known
as the chronic pain patient.
In the years that I've been on opioids, rates of painkiller abuse and heroin
addiction have exploded, as have articles, blog posts and Op-Eds about these
trends. In an effort to make informed decisions and make sense of my mixed
feelings about opioid therapy, I've read dozens of articles and books,
including Melanie Thernstrom's "The Pain Chronicles," Judy Foreman's "A
Nation in Pain," Barry Meier's "Pain Killer" and Sam Quinones'
"Dreamland"-most of which tell the same basic story.
In the 1990s, prominent pain specialists claimed that chronic pain was
massively undertreated. Based on a study that critics have since said was
limited and misinterpreted, these specialists argued that there is
statistically a very small chance of someone on opioids for chronic pain
becoming addicted, particularly if they have no previous substance abuse
problem. They argued that opioids such as hydrocodone (e.g., in Vicodin) and
oxycodone (e.g., in Percocet) could be effectively and safely used long-term
for non-malignant pain. Purdue Pharma developed a timed-release form of
oxycodone called OxyContin, aggressively marketing it to primary care
physicians for use by patients needing steady around-the-clock pain relief.
Purdue stated that OxyContin's slow-release formula would make it
unattractive to addicts who want a quick, substantial high.
Drug addicts soon figured out that by crushing OxyContin to destroy the
timed-release mechanism and snorting or injecting the powder, they could get
the entire dose-meant to be parceled out over eight or 12 hours-at once.
Only after towns in places like Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky were
overwhelmed with people addicted to opioids and dying of overdoses did
Purdue admit that they had misstated OxyContin's non-addictive nature. Some
pain specialists have since backed off their call for aggressive opioid
treatment, though some still believe that pain is undertreated and that
opioids work well for some patients. Furthermore, there is simply not much
good research on how effective opioids are or could be in treating different
types of chronic pain.
Much of the journalism that tells this same basic story also reinforces the
same misinformation. Journalists, for example, regularly confuse physical
dependence (in which anyone who uses opioids long-term will become dependent
and experience withdrawal symptoms if they stop taking them suddenly) with
addiction (which involves loss of control, compulsion and continuing to
abuse a substance despite negative consequences for one's health and life).
Articles imply that addiction is an inevitable consequence for anyone who
takes opioids for more than a couple of days. A 2010 Time magazine article,
for example, painted a portrait of middle-aged folks, with our aches and
pains and routine surgeries, becoming addicted after popping a few pills;
the article referred to post-surgical pain prescriptions as "little opioid
starter kit[s]" that "pickle" the brains of "users." In addition, reports of
the sharp increase in opioid-related overdoses regularly fail to note that
many overdose deaths involve opioids taken with other substances, including
alcohol and anti-anxiety medications-a dangerous practice in which
responsible patients know not to engage.
Coverage of opioid use for chronic pain patients tends to profile patients
for whom opioid therapy either didn't work or did indeed feed an addiction.
Misinformed journalism reinforces the stereotype of chronic pain patients as
needy, lazy and more interested in getting drugs than getting better. In a
New York Times Op-Ed last year, Sam Quinones chastised patients for being
"enslaved" by our "pursuit of painlessness" and expecting doctors and pills
to "magically fix us." What we really need to do, Quinones preached, is lose
weight, eat better and stop looking for an easy fix. As anyone successfully
using opioids to manage pain could have told him, little about opioid
therapy is easy, and we know better than anyone that "painlessness" is
unobtainable. My medications don't obliterate my pain; they mute it to a
level that allows me to live without constantly thinking about what hurts.
Journalists occasionally include a sentence to the effect of, "For some
people, opioids provide real and needed relief for their chronic pain." But
I have yet to see a mainstream media article that goes on to tell the story
of one of those people. My story, or a story like mine, rarely makes it into
the news.
Conventional wisdom says that guilt is about something you do, while shame
is about who you are. To that I would add: Guilt lives in the head, while
shame inhabits the body. Physiological markers of shame-cheeks flaming red,
heart pounding, stomach roiling, the piercing urge to run and hide-overtake
me every time I walk into my drug store. The stigma, controversy and
potentially addictive nature of my prescriptions render my pharmacy
interactions time-consuming, difficult and occasionally humiliating. I so
strongly associate the pharmacy counter with shame that even when I go into
the store just to buy a birthday card or deodorant, my cheeks burn and my
heart races.
Drugstores are strange places-the goods on their shelves a mashup of
frivolity, practicality and urgent necessity, and the pharmacy counter a
place of unsettling intimacy. Your pharmacist knows things about you that
even your friends may not-that you have chronic yeast infections or severe
dandruff, that you're back for yet another month's worth of fertility drugs,
that you keep trading up for more and more potent medications for an illness
that isn't getting better.
Along with discomfort at the pharmacy counter comes a more generalized sense
of shame over taking medication at all. A friend who takes antidepressants
says that every day, she asks herself if she really needs that little blue
pill, or if she is taking the easy way out. Our current cultural climate
exacerbates the stigma of taking medication for conditions, including
psychiatric illness and chronic pain, that some people perceive as character
flaws instead of medical problems. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are
populated by rants against Big Pharma and profit-focused doctors alongside
uplifting stories about people who take a DIY approach to health -the woman
with multiple sclerosis who claims she is still able to walk because of her
self-engineered diet and exercise program, the nutritionist who offers sour
cherries and other anti-inflammatory foods as a remedy for back pain, the
blogger who shares his regimen of daily runs, extra-high doses of Vitamin D,
and a diet cleansed of grains, dairy, and sugar as a surefire way to send
wintertime depression packing.
In a culture distrustful of experts and authority figures, and partial to
sloppily constructed arguments favoring the "natural" over the human-made,
ongoing dependence on any kind of medication is questionable. Dependence on
opioids- a substance often abused and at the root of severe social ills-is
seen as not merely misguided or uninformed, but deeply suspect.
The alarming rise in painkiller abuse, heroin addiction, overdoses and
deaths is, of course, worthy of extensive and urgent conversation. I know
too well the damage that addiction can do. My husband's family history is
scarred by addiction and depression-twin legacies that contributed to the
deaths of two of his brothers before they turned 40.
I also understand why opioids need to be regulated, and that logistical
hurdles-that I must drive to pick up a new paper prescription from my
doctor's office every month and can usually get a new prescription filled
only a full 30 days after the old one (which leaves no leeway for delays
like the one I had several months ago)-are designed to deter abuse and
diversion.
But if I give opioids up, it won't be because of logistical hassles, even if
they are haphazard and maddening. It won't be because opioids don't work.
No, the only reason I'm seriously considering going off opioids for good- a
process that will require tapering my dose down for many months to avoid
withdrawal-is that I'm tired of feeling so ashamed.
The shame that overtakes my body when I walk into the pharmacy isn't guilt
about mistakes I've made in trying to live well with a deteriorating
skeleton, things I've done that I shouldn't or haven't done that I should,
although there are plenty of those. The shame is about who I've become-in
the eyes of a culture suspicious of traditional medicine and reeling from
painkiller and heroin abuse, in the eyes of medical professionals stymied by
chronic pain, wary of potential drug seekers, and anxious to avoid suspicion
about their prescribing practices, and in my own eyes. To be a chronic pain
patient on opioids is to be seen as a problem, instead of as a person who,
with the help of these potent medications and other tools, lives an active,
satisfying life despite joints that crunch and bones that ache.
Ellen Painter Dollar writes about disability, family, faith and ethics for
Patheos.com and elsewhere. She is the author of No Easy Choice: A Story of
Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction
(Westminster John Knox, 2012).
Share on Facebook Share
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [3]
[4]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/dependent-narcotics-does-not-mean-addict
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ellen-painter-dollar
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on I'm Dependent on
Narcotics; That Doesn't Mean I'm an Addict
[4] http://www.alternet.org/
[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > I'm Dependent on Narcotics; That Doesn't Mean I'm an Addict
I'm Dependent on Narcotics; That Doesn't Mean I'm an Addict
By Ellen Painter Dollar [1] / Salon [2]
January 18, 2016
I started taking opioid painkillers not long after my third and last child
was born. Despite having had nearly four dozen broken bones in childhood due
to a genetic bone disorder (osteogenesis imperfecta or OI), I struggled
little with pain or functional limitations in my young adulthood. I limped
and tired easily, but every day I climbed up and down stairs, cleaned and
cooked, walked with a baby or two in a stroller to do errands, and cared for
my young children without any more severe consequence than sore muscles and
joints at bedtime.
But around the time my son was born, things started, literally, to fall
apart. Eight months pregnant, I sustained a meniscal tear in my left knee
that would ultimately be surgically repaired twice but never really fixed.
Today, at 47 years old, I have no cartilage left in either knee; sometimes
when I change position, the joints emit an audible crunch. A stress fracture
in my femur has bothered me on and off for a year. My orthopedist reports
that the balls of my hip joints are embedding themselves in the too-soft
bone of my pelvic sockets. My right wrist aches and throbs at night,
particularly if I did a lot of writing or housecleaning that day.
To continue to climb up and down stairs, clean and cook, do my work, and
care for my family, I rely on long-acting opioids, combined with high doses
of Vitamin D, ibuprofen, hot baths, low-impact exercise (especially
swimming), a produce-heavy anti-inflammatory diet, and rest.
In the years that I've been using opioids, their use has become more
restricted and controversial. A surge in heroin addiction and overdose is
directly related to painkiller abuse. People get hooked on the Vicodin or
Percocet prescribed after surgery or an injury. When they find that buying
pills on the street is prohibitively expensive, they turn to heroin, which
gives the same high for a much lower price. Recently, a study by Nobel
Prize-winning economists of startlingly high death rates for white,
high-school-educated, middle-aged Americans concluded that this trend is
linked to substance abuse and addiction, including opioid abuse and
alcoholism. Meanwhile, few data are available defining to what extent and in
what doses and formulations opioids are effective in treating chronic pain,
and opioids are likely not the right treatment for many chronic pain
patients. Research further verifies that doctors perceive chronic pain
patients as among the most time-consuming and difficult patients to treat.
In a recent Boston Globe Op-Ed, Judy Foreman related this anecdote: When
professors at one medical school asked graduating medical students what they
would do when faced by a pain patient, one student spoke for many: "Run!"
While opioids may not be the right treatment for all, or even most, chronic
pain patients, these medications work well for me with few side effects. The
simple fact that I've found an effective treatment allowing me to live an
active life with significant disability, however, is obscured by the
controversy, fear, stigma and caution that surround opioid prescribing.
Getting my medication has become steadily more difficult-a development I'd
find easier to accommodate if it didn't come packaged with shame and fear
that stricter prescribing rules, and practitioners weary of following those
rules while second-guessing patient intentions, might ultimately mean that I
can't get this medication at all. I've begun preempting such a situation by
proactively tapering down my prescription painkillers, and may ultimately go
off them altogether.
Several months ago, I had to call my doctor's office four times and the
pharmacy three times in a matter of hours (during my workday) to get my
prescription filled. My doctor's less-than-pristine handwriting made the
pharmacy-where I've had my prescriptions, prescribed by the same doctor,
filled for about six years-suspicious that the prescription had been
tampered with, so they wanted to call the doctor's office to verify it. My
doctor's medical assistant left for the day at noon without returning the
pharmacy's call. Having taken my last pill of the previous prescription that
morning, I knew that if I didn't get the prescription filled that day, I'd
be up all night with pain and the effects of opioid withdrawal. With each
call I made, the anxiety and urgency in my voice ticked upward. Another of
my doctor's staff members eventually verified the prescription so I could
get it filled. The pharmacist was angry about so much time spent on a single
prescription. My doctor's staff member was annoyed that she had to step in
to do a job that wasn't hers. I got my prescription, and I also got a hefty
dose of shame that I have become the anxious and demanding time-suck known
as the chronic pain patient.
In the years that I've been on opioids, rates of painkiller abuse and heroin
addiction have exploded, as have articles, blog posts and Op-Eds about these
trends. In an effort to make informed decisions and make sense of my mixed
feelings about opioid therapy, I've read dozens of articles and books,
including Melanie Thernstrom's "The Pain Chronicles," Judy Foreman's "A
Nation in Pain," Barry Meier's "Pain Killer" and Sam Quinones'
"Dreamland"-most of which tell the same basic story.
In the 1990s, prominent pain specialists claimed that chronic pain was
massively undertreated. Based on a study that critics have since said was
limited and misinterpreted, these specialists argued that there is
statistically a very small chance of someone on opioids for chronic pain
becoming addicted, particularly if they have no previous substance abuse
problem. They argued that opioids such as hydrocodone (e.g., in Vicodin) and
oxycodone (e.g., in Percocet) could be effectively and safely used long-term
for non-malignant pain. Purdue Pharma developed a timed-release form of
oxycodone called OxyContin, aggressively marketing it to primary care
physicians for use by patients needing steady around-the-clock pain relief.
Purdue stated that OxyContin's slow-release formula would make it
unattractive to addicts who want a quick, substantial high.
Drug addicts soon figured out that by crushing OxyContin to destroy the
timed-release mechanism and snorting or injecting the powder, they could get
the entire dose-meant to be parceled out over eight or 12 hours-at once.
Only after towns in places like Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky were
overwhelmed with people addicted to opioids and dying of overdoses did
Purdue admit that they had misstated OxyContin's non-addictive nature. Some
pain specialists have since backed off their call for aggressive opioid
treatment, though some still believe that pain is undertreated and that
opioids work well for some patients. Furthermore, there is simply not much
good research on how effective opioids are or could be in treating different
types of chronic pain.
Much of the journalism that tells this same basic story also reinforces the
same misinformation. Journalists, for example, regularly confuse physical
dependence (in which anyone who uses opioids long-term will become dependent
and experience withdrawal symptoms if they stop taking them suddenly) with
addiction (which involves loss of control, compulsion and continuing to
abuse a substance despite negative consequences for one's health and life).
Articles imply that addiction is an inevitable consequence for anyone who
takes opioids for more than a couple of days. A 2010 Time magazine article,
for example, painted a portrait of middle-aged folks, with our aches and
pains and routine surgeries, becoming addicted after popping a few pills;
the article referred to post-surgical pain prescriptions as "little opioid
starter kit[s]" that "pickle" the brains of "users." In addition, reports of
the sharp increase in opioid-related overdoses regularly fail to note that
many overdose deaths involve opioids taken with other substances, including
alcohol and anti-anxiety medications-a dangerous practice in which
responsible patients know not to engage.
Coverage of opioid use for chronic pain patients tends to profile patients
for whom opioid therapy either didn't work or did indeed feed an addiction.
Misinformed journalism reinforces the stereotype of chronic pain patients as
needy, lazy and more interested in getting drugs than getting better. In a
New York Times Op-Ed last year, Sam Quinones chastised patients for being
"enslaved" by our "pursuit of painlessness" and expecting doctors and pills
to "magically fix us." What we really need to do, Quinones preached, is lose
weight, eat better and stop looking for an easy fix. As anyone successfully
using opioids to manage pain could have told him, little about opioid
therapy is easy, and we know better than anyone that "painlessness" is
unobtainable. My medications don't obliterate my pain; they mute it to a
level that allows me to live without constantly thinking about what hurts.
Journalists occasionally include a sentence to the effect of, "For some
people, opioids provide real and needed relief for their chronic pain." But
I have yet to see a mainstream media article that goes on to tell the story
of one of those people. My story, or a story like mine, rarely makes it into
the news.
Conventional wisdom says that guilt is about something you do, while shame
is about who you are. To that I would add: Guilt lives in the head, while
shame inhabits the body. Physiological markers of shame-cheeks flaming red,
heart pounding, stomach roiling, the piercing urge to run and hide-overtake
me every time I walk into my drug store. The stigma, controversy and
potentially addictive nature of my prescriptions render my pharmacy
interactions time-consuming, difficult and occasionally humiliating. I so
strongly associate the pharmacy counter with shame that even when I go into
the store just to buy a birthday card or deodorant, my cheeks burn and my
heart races.
Drugstores are strange places-the goods on their shelves a mashup of
frivolity, practicality and urgent necessity, and the pharmacy counter a
place of unsettling intimacy. Your pharmacist knows things about you that
even your friends may not-that you have chronic yeast infections or severe
dandruff, that you're back for yet another month's worth of fertility drugs,
that you keep trading up for more and more potent medications for an illness
that isn't getting better.
Along with discomfort at the pharmacy counter comes a more generalized sense
of shame over taking medication at all. A friend who takes antidepressants
says that every day, she asks herself if she really needs that little blue
pill, or if she is taking the easy way out. Our current cultural climate
exacerbates the stigma of taking medication for conditions, including
psychiatric illness and chronic pain, that some people perceive as character
flaws instead of medical problems. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are
populated by rants against Big Pharma and profit-focused doctors alongside
uplifting stories about people who take a DIY approach to health -the woman
with multiple sclerosis who claims she is still able to walk because of her
self-engineered diet and exercise program, the nutritionist who offers sour
cherries and other anti-inflammatory foods as a remedy for back pain, the
blogger who shares his regimen of daily runs, extra-high doses of Vitamin D,
and a diet cleansed of grains, dairy, and sugar as a surefire way to send
wintertime depression packing.
In a culture distrustful of experts and authority figures, and partial to
sloppily constructed arguments favoring the "natural" over the human-made,
ongoing dependence on any kind of medication is questionable. Dependence on
opioids- a substance often abused and at the root of severe social ills-is
seen as not merely misguided or uninformed, but deeply suspect.
The alarming rise in painkiller abuse, heroin addiction, overdoses and
deaths is, of course, worthy of extensive and urgent conversation. I know
too well the damage that addiction can do. My husband's family history is
scarred by addiction and depression-twin legacies that contributed to the
deaths of two of his brothers before they turned 40.
I also understand why opioids need to be regulated, and that logistical
hurdles-that I must drive to pick up a new paper prescription from my
doctor's office every month and can usually get a new prescription filled
only a full 30 days after the old one (which leaves no leeway for delays
like the one I had several months ago)-are designed to deter abuse and
diversion.
But if I give opioids up, it won't be because of logistical hassles, even if
they are haphazard and maddening. It won't be because opioids don't work.
No, the only reason I'm seriously considering going off opioids for good- a
process that will require tapering my dose down for many months to avoid
withdrawal-is that I'm tired of feeling so ashamed.
The shame that overtakes my body when I walk into the pharmacy isn't guilt
about mistakes I've made in trying to live well with a deteriorating
skeleton, things I've done that I shouldn't or haven't done that I should,
although there are plenty of those. The shame is about who I've become-in
the eyes of a culture suspicious of traditional medicine and reeling from
painkiller and heroin abuse, in the eyes of medical professionals stymied by
chronic pain, wary of potential drug seekers, and anxious to avoid suspicion
about their prescribing practices, and in my own eyes. To be a chronic pain
patient on opioids is to be seen as a problem, instead of as a person who,
with the help of these potent medications and other tools, lives an active,
satisfying life despite joints that crunch and bones that ache.
Ellen Painter Dollar writes about disability, family, faith and ethics for
Patheos.com and elsewhere. She is the author of No Easy Choice: A Story of
Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction
(Westminster John Knox, 2012).
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [3]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[4]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/dependent-narcotics-does-not-mean-addict
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ellen-painter-dollar
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on I'm Dependent on
Narcotics; That Doesn't Mean I'm an Addict
[4] http://www.alternet.org/
[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
