Wonderland Recovery Blog

Our own Dr. Reef Karim, consulting psychiatrist, was on the Mike and Juliet Show this morning talking about Adderall addiction. They labeled it the “Hidden Addiction” as Adderall is prescribed for ADHD and can be easily abused.

You can see the video here.

Excellent job Dr. Karim!

You can also see the video of Dr. Karim’s last words here.

For more information visit us on the web at www.wonderlandcenter.com.

Here’s a new site for a quit smoking plan. Take a look, let us know what you think.

Smoking kills MILLIONS of people a year and yet folks don’t see it as an addiction.
Or at least one worth treating as seriously as alcohol or drugs.

QUIT TODAY!

CNN is reporting on doctors being treated for addiction, approximately 8,000 across the country. The article is listed in full below, and available with picture here.

Comments?

Addicted doctors still treat patients

Story Highlights
Patients claim addicted doctor botched surgery
Doctors group says more than 8,000 doctors in U.S. are being treated for addiction
California may shut down program for addicted doctors because of abuses
By Randi Kaye
CNN
SACRAMENTO, California (CNN) — A woman who says she had to forgo cancer treatment because of botched surgery by a California doctor says she was never made aware that the doctor was being treated for alcoholism and had been convicted for driving under the influence of alcohol.

Becky Anderson received a breast reconstruction from Dr. Brian West, a California plastic surgeon, in September 2000. Becky, who was suffering from breast cancer, says she had to forgo cancer treatment while battling complications from West’s surgery.

Now she is dying of cancer. She had no idea when she let West treat her that he had been convicted for driving under the influence in 1987 and had been arrested for a second DUI, for which he was later convicted, while on the way to treat her.

She claims he lied about the DUI, blaming a missed appointment with her on a car accident. She sued the doctor for negligence and malpractice. He never admitted any fault, but settled with her for $250,000.

West is an alcoholic, according to a Medical Board of California decision, and a member of the state’s Physician Diversion Program.

The program keeps the doctors’ identities private, so it allowed him to continue to treat patients, even operate on them, while he was secretly getting treatment for his addiction.

West declined CNN’s repeated requests for an interview. But his lawyer told CNN that West never treated a patient while under the influence of alcohol.

In California, the state medical association says there are between 200 and 400 doctors in this diversion program on any given day.

A study by the Federation of State Physician Health Programs found about one percent of all physicians practicing in the United States are in confidential treatment. That’s about 8,000 doctors whose patients may have no idea that they are addicts.

The program may soon be shut down. Five audits since 1982 found a string of failures. In some cases physicians appointed people who work for them as their monitors. In other cases doctors could easily know in advance when a “random” drug test was going to take place.

Julie D’Angelo of the Center for Public Interest Law, who did one of the audits in 2004 says “the drug testing was in a word, ridiculous.”

“They were using untrained collectors who were not collecting on the random date generated by the computer. Instead, they were routinely doing it on days the physicians could anticipate,” D’Angelo says.

The Medical Board of California, which oversees the program, wants to shut it down in July of this year. The board ruled last year that it failed to protect patients. But the California Medical Association, a physicians advocacy group, is fighting to keep the program running, and to keep the names of doctors enrolled confidential.

The association’s president, Joe Dunn, told CNN, “We believe very strongly this is the absolute best way to insure patient safety. We need to get physicians out of the shadows.”

Dunn believes that if the program is shut down in July, doctors will still continue to feed their addiction “privately” and not get help. He argues, “Without a diversion program, no one knows. Patients don’t know. Health professionals who could help don’t know.”

Nearly every state has a similar program, and a recent nationwide study by researchers in cooperation with the Federation of State Physician health programs found that nationwide 80 percent of the doctors in the program recover from their addiction and stay clean.

Still, Ken Mikulecky wants to see the California program shut down.

His wife, Sharon had a mastectomy after learning she had breast cancer. Ken Mikulecky says West performed breast reconstruction on his wife by using stomach muscle to rebuild her breast. He says her incision became infected and left a gaping hole in her abdomen. Just like Becky Anderson, Sharon Mikulecky had to put off cancer treatment for about a year. She died in 2003.

The Mikuleckys say they were not aware of West’s DUI convictions or that he was enrolled in the state’s rehabilitation program, which required outside treatment but let him continue operating on patients.

Ken Mikulecky told CNN, “When that person’s right to privacy hurts other people, harms other people, that should not be allowed to happen. … She told me several times that she could smell alcohol on his breath. … Til the day I die, I gotta live with that, and that hurts pretty good, because I didn’t believe my wife.”

California’s Medical Board says West flunked out of the diversion program and was placed on probation. He was not allowed to practice medicine for one year, but that time has come and gone. Today, his lawyer says West is back in the program and has been “in recovery for years.”

CNN confirmed he is back in business, operating on patients in Beverly Hills, California.

Ken Mikulecky, who is working with West’s former patients and the state attorney general on a petition to have his license revoked, is convinced his wife would have had a better chance of surviving had her doctor not been an addict.

Still, he says, he’s forgiven the doctor. “That’s between him and God. I got my own soul to look after. I just want him to stop.”

You can view the article with pictures here.

Here’s the article in its entirety.
Dr. Samuel’s quotes are in bold.

Blurring the Lines Between Addiction and Entertainment
In and Out of Rehab, Hollywood Stars Get Caught in a Dangerous Spiral

By HARRY PHILLIPS, MARY FULGINITI and EAMON MCNIFF
March 28, 2008 —

It seems that almost every week there’s a new celebrity, another story of substance abuse, or one more humiliating mug shot pulling back the curtain on a member of America’s royalty. Substance abuse itself knows no borders of wealth or fame. From Camden, N.J., to Beverly Hills, Calif.; it reaches all races and classes. Yet the hot pops of the paparazzi cameras leave no celebrity embarrassment uncovered. Flipping through the tabloids, Hollywood looks like a town that revolves around clubbing, drinking and, when the celebrities are caught, drugs.

Watch the story tonight on “20/20″ at 10 p.m. ET

There’s Lindsay Lohan’s vicious circle of addiction, arrest, rehab and relapse. Britney Spears is teetering on the edge for the entire world to see, rumors of drug use and mental instability swirling around her. Never has a hamburger been given so much attention as when David Hasselhoff comically mangled it after a night of drinking in a moment that shot to viral stardom. But when his daughter’s voice can be heard behind the lens, pleading with her slurring, shirtless father to get help, it doesn’t seem that funny any longer.

Imagery like that is all too familiar and indelible. Just this week Bon Jovi lead guitarist Richie Sambora was the latest star to get snared for drunk driving.

“We’re seeing it explode,” Dr. Drew Pinsky said to ABC News. “It’s a pandemic right now. We’re seeing younger people get more serious addiction, more rapidly with multiple substances.”

Pinsky is a radio host and a doctor, who has treated and studied celebrity addicts for more than 20 years.

He says that a dangerous cocktail of money, power and the ability to give both to others particularly puts celebrities at risk for not getting help for addiction.

“There’s not a boss, not the legal system, there’s not a family there to capture them and contain them and refer them for treatment or to help contain their behaviors,” Pinsky said. “They have too much money and power, and it spirals out of control.”

‘You’re as Sick as Your Secrets’

Hollywood has always been a place where drugs and fame intersect at disaster. The list of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their addiction is long and tragic: Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, John Belushi, Chris Farley, River Phoenix, to name a few. In the past year alone Anna Nicole Smith, Ike Turner, Brad Renfro and Heath Ledger, all had their lives cut short.

Ledger died of an accidental overdose of six different prescription drugs. Unlike other celebrity drug users, his problems were not widely known. For Pinsky that was a major factor in Ledger not getting the proper help.

“You’re adding to the stigma by shrouding it in secrecy,” he said. “You’re as sick as your secrets when you have addiction and it is fueling other people to keep their secrets and end up where he ended up.”

At the opposite end of that spectrum is Amy Winehouse. Her battles with drug addiction were daily tabloid fodder, all of which came to a head when a video of her reputedly smoking crack, and openly talking about taking too many tranquilizers, hit the Web.

“Amy Winehouse has severe, profound, life-threatening addiction,” Pinsky said. “She has made a career out of resisting treatment. I don’t know what it’s going to take to turn her around. I really fear for her life.”

Former teen heartthrob and actor Corey Feldman talked to ABC News about his own public struggles with addiction, problems that sank a skyrocketing career when he was only a teenager.

“I was 15½, I think 15 the first time I smoked weed, and by 19 I was clean,” Feldman said. “So the actual addiction lasted from about 16½ to about 18½.

“It shattered my career to be completely brutally honest. Shattered it into pieces.”

Feldman said he’s grateful for the way things turned out, forcing him to face his demons and get help that has kept him sober for close to 19 years.

“Thank God that I fell into the barricades and the problems and the pit holes that I did, because had I not fallen into those pit holes at such an early age, it would’ve followed my career and it would’ve followed my life,” he said, adding that for many of today’s celebrities the repeated “second chances” and lack of accountability give them little reason to get sober.

“The problem with the children today is they keep getting opportunities over and over and over. So every time they get into trouble, somebody is willing to bend over and hand them another opportunity.”

Trips to the Rehab Clinic

For stars like Lindsay Lohan and Robert Downey Jr., second chances seem to be waiting after every trip to rehab, and, even when they actually do seek help, places like the Meadows in Arizona, or Promises in Malibu, Calif., all including spa treatments and lush grounds, sound like vacation spots that many people could only hope to visit.

But for Pinsky, the public perception that a trip to the rehab clinic is akin to a week at a luxury spa was exactly the reason he wanted to show the public what really goes on behind the gates of treatment centers. After rounding up a group of willing low-end celebrity addicts, he created Celebrity Rehab With Doctor Drew.

The show has been an instant hit for VH1, featuring actors Daniel Baldwin, who left the show in midseason, Jeff Conaway and former porn actress Mary Carey, to name a few. The show has also raised questions about whether putting addicts on television is really in their best interests.

“My question really has to be, what is their real motivation? Is their motivation money or fame — or sobriety?” said Dr. Howard Samuels, clinical director of the Wonderland Treatment Center in Los Angeles.

“I’m a recovering addict,” Samuels said. “No one paid me to go to rehab. I went to rehab because I hit a wall of pain. I went to rehab to save my life. I didn’t go to rehab to get a check.”

But Pinsky contends that his cameras don’t capture the intense and real treatment his patients are getting and the entertainment aspect is worth the risk to give the public a very real look at addiction treatment.

“What people are reacting to is the parts they’re seeing, not the recognition that the treatment itself was 14 hours a day,” Pinsky said. “They don’t know what kind of treatment we did. You don’t see that on TV. They had thorough and excellent treatment. Their outcomes were unusually good. The cameras seemed to have a positive effect on them. How is that exploitation?”

“I’m sick and tired of the media — and as my staff was — sick and tired of people talking about treatment as though it were some sort of spa experience,” he said. “It is serious medical treatment. It is a life-threatening illness. It is worth the risk. And these people were willing to take it.”

The chances that Pinsky’s celebrities will relapse are high, cameras or not. As Pinsky knows all too well, rehab is a low-percentage business. He hopes that the controversy and harrowing images of public figures battling addiction will spark greater interest in a problem that stretches far beyond Hollywood Boulevard.

A big article in the New York Times regarding the age gap in treatment.

You can see the article here.

Lots of good points are raised in this about the differences between younger and older addicts and alcoholics. Check it out!

Come see Wonderland Center at the California Psychological Association convention at Disneyland in Anaheim! For more information, see:

http://www.cpapsych.org/associations/6414/files/events/convention08/index.htm

Here’s an article regarding the meth epidemic in Northern California and a quick piece about one man’s battle and recovery from crystal meth. A good piece talking about the crackdown on meth dealers in California.

Here’s the link:

http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=39944

http://www.news10.net/includes/buildasx.aspx?fn=/march2008/032608/web-crystal-darkness.wmv&sp=mms://wm.kxtv.gannett.edgestreams.net/ads/sales/chaquico-032208.wmv

A website based on WMAQ Chicago listed an article published in this month’s Journal of Psychiatry, talking about the perils of internet addiction. Check it out below.

http://www.nbc5.com/health/15705275/detail.html

Talking about the dangers of salvia!

See the video here.

Here’s an article in the New York Times about one woman’s experience with painkiller addiction. Taking up to 50 Vicodin a day? Crazy! But a good story of hope and recovery, and gaining one’s life back from the struggles of addiction.

Here’s the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/jobs/23pre.html?ex=1363924800&en=7a0e9ee06954d9eb&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink