Look for these signs and symptoms of prescription medicine abuse The summer is a season often spent with family, loved ones and acquaintances you don’t see as often during the year. As you prepare to spend more time with these people in the coming months, be sure to educate yourself on the signs of prescription […]
Tennessee Legislature: Now Is the Time To End Opioid Abuse
The Tennessee General Assembly has formed a joint task force on opioid and prescription drug abuse. House Speaker Beth Harwell, who is leading up the task force, has set her sights on determining best practices to dismantle Tennessee’s opioid and prescription abuse problems. According to the Tennessee Department of Health, data show that 1,451 people […]
Nashville’s fledgling addiction recovery high school
A couple hours before lunch, 15-year-old Owen Rockenbach was perched on a beanbag mattress on the floor, notebook in his lap, talking about depression with a clinical psychologist. It’s just another day at Ridgecrest Academy, which is definitely not just another high school. “The teacher picked up Chinese food for the kids for lunch the […]
Toll on Tennesseans Challenges BlueCross to Tackle State’s Opioid Crisis
Last fall, Beth Anderson had hope that her daughter, Olivia Sucher, could break the grip of addiction. Olivia had the love and support of family and friends on her side. April 2, 2016 changed all that. With a phone call early that morning, the BlueCross employee learned that an overdose had claimed the life of […]
Tennessee doctors: No one knew painkillers were so deadly
My cousin come up from Knoxville And he taught me a thing or two Now I’m headed nowhere but downhill With the OxyContin blues — Steve Earle, “OxyContin Blues” You can trace the history of Tennesseans’ problems with substance abuse by listening to their music. In 1957, Robert Mitchum was roaring out on Thunder Road […]
Fighting for our lives: Tennessee’s opioid crisis
Tennesseans will soon hear about Count it! Lock it! Drop it!, a grass-roots effort of Coffee County’s Anti-Drug Coalition. “What’s wrong, Mama?” That’s the question Olivia asked her mother, Beth, who was wrestling with her own question, “Will Olivia make it?” For years, Olivia had struggled with pain pill addiction and all that comes with […]
Count it, Lock it, Drop it combats painkiller addiction in Tennessee
Adam Allmon craved the euphoria and confidence of a high so much he would “rob you, steal from you and manipulate you” to get what he wanted. What he wanted was drugs. First cocaine. Then meth. When he awoke in a trauma unit after a car wreck, he became enabled by a new intoxication. Painkillers. The crash happened on a clear October afternoon […]
Next Nashville Storytellers To Focus On Addiction, Recovery
In Tennessee, more people died from opioid overdoses than in car accidents or by gunshots in 2014. For every one person who dies nationally, there are 851 people in various stages of misuse, abuse and treatment, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The abuse epidemic, as The Tennessean reported earlier this year, […]
