Nashville Public Radio April 20, 2017 Nearly 1.5 million Americans were treated for addiction to prescription opioids or heroin in 2015, according to federal estimates, and when those people get seriously hurt or need surgery, it’s often not clear, even to many doctors, how to safely manage their pain. For some former addicts, what begins […]
Small-town struggles: Addiction, lack of resources plague health providers at TN-KY border
Kristi L. Nelson April 18, 2017 A dozen years ago, Dr. Geogy Thomas wasn’t prepared to see pregnant women addicted to pain medication in his little rural primary-care clinic. When they trickled in, he’d refer them to a high-risk obstetrics practice at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, an hour away. Then he […]
Legislation educating ‘at-risk’ mothers of drug dependent babies passes committee
April 7, 2017 Zach Vance Nearly one-third of babies born in Niswonger Children’s Hospital at any given time are diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome, according to hospital officials. Last year, more than 200 babies born in the Tri-Cities were exposed to addictive opiate drugs while in their mothers’ wombs. According to a Tennessee Department of […]
Tennessee’s plans to battle opioid abuse: nurses in recovery, naloxone kits
March 31, 2017 Kristi L. Nelson The state’s new weapons to fight the opioid addiction epidemic might be nurses who have been addicts themselves, and naloxone kits in the hands of those most likely to overdose. Oh, and $13.8 million from the Sen. Lamar Alexander-led 21st Century Cures Act. The Tennessee Department of Mental Health […]
How opioids took hold of Tennessee
Anita Wadhwani Tennessee’s opioid crisis: An abbreviated timeline 1995 Food and Drug Administration approves OxyContin for prescription use. Its active ingredient, oxycodone, has been deemed highly addictive since the 1960s. 1999 5 percent of people receiving state-funded addiction treatment are abusing prescription pain relievers. 342 deaths due to drug overdoses 2000 416 individuals receive state-funded treatment […]
What one young adult’s addiction says about Tennessee’s opioid crisis
March 26, 2017 Holly Fletcher Joy Fanguy was so afraid of overdosing on pain pills that she kept a running log of how many she’d taken on her nightstand. Some nights, she scrawled a note in the event she didn’t wake to let her loved ones know her death was not a suicide. “I was always […]
Faces of Addiction: Dr. Stephen Loyd, Part II
We are pleased to have Dr. Stephen Loyd back today to share the rest of his story of addiction. Part II: There Is Hope My addiction started to have consequences. I had three car wrecks (two of those in my own driveway), and I was losing my family. I couldn’t stop using the pain pills. […]
Faces of Addiction: Dr. Stephen Loyd
We are pleased to have Stephen Loyd, M.D., as our guest today to share his story of addiction. Dr. Loyd, a native of Johnson City, Tenn., is the medical director of Substance Abuse Services for the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Part I: Anyone Can Be An Addict No one I […]
How I became the unlikely face of addiction
Feb. 3, 2017 Dr. Stephen Loyd No one wakes up one day and makes a conscious decision to become a drug addict. I certainly didn’t. But about 15 years ago, I began taking hydrocodone (Lortab, Vicodin) pain pills. I’m sharing my story because there is something you can do as a measure of prevention. I’d […]
Long-term Users Say They’re Hooked on Opioids
According to a recent poll conducted by the Washington Post and The Kaiser Family Foundation, at least one-third of Americans who have taken prescription opioids for two months or more say they have become addicted to the drugs. Among the respondents who are long-term users, all of them say they were introduced to the prescription […]
