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 […]
Pink: Stronger Than Heroin, But Legal In Most States
Two 13-year-old boys in the ski town of Park City, Utah died within 48 hours of each other in September, likely overdosing on a powerful heroin substitute that had been delivered — legally — to their homes by the U.S. mail, and is now turning up in cities across the nation. Ryan Ainsworth was found […]
Drugged driving overtakes alcohol in Tennessee road deaths
She buckles a stuffed teddy bear into a baby car seat and heads down the same two-lane country road where her son was killed in 2014. The teddy bear’s skin is denim — a favorite pair of Jacob Akers’ jeans. Its shirt is purple, the color of Lipscomb University, where Akers had graduated pre-med just two […]
Tennessee makes inroads on opioid epidemic
Tennessee is ranked among the top two states in painkiller prescription rates. Tennessee has made progress in fighting the opioid epidemic. The state has declared the massive problem the No. 1 public health crisis in the state and painkiller prescriptions have fallen from 8.5 million to 7.8 million over the past three years. Companies like BlueCross BlueShield Tennessee […]
A Grassroots Program Grows
Count It! Lock it! Drop it! reduced prescription drug misuse in Coffee County and is going statewide. The greatest danger of prescription drugs is the widespread belief they aren’t dangerous. “In a 2009 survey of students in Coffee County, we saw that there was a very high rate of prescription drug use, with many kids […]
Dr. Manoj Jain: Doctors must play a role in curbing opioid addiction
Last week, thousands of my physician colleagues and I received a letter from the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy. He asked us to change our behavior in prescribing pain medicines. Around the same time, I was seeing a middle-aged man who had been admitted to the hospital for the fifth time in the same […]
Tennessee gets federal funding to fight opioid overdoses
Tennessee is set to receive federal funding that can be used to improve opioid prescription tracking databases and enhance community awareness programs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is distributing $53 million in funding for various programs that bolster opioid overdose awareness and addiction treatment services to 44 states, Washington, D.C., and four […]
Lock It! Don’t Be An Accidental Drug Dealer
The opioid addiction epidemic is a large and oftentimes overwhelming problem in Tennessee. You likely know someone who has become addicted to prescription medication. What you may not know is more than 55 percent of people that misuse prescription pills in 2014 got those pills from a friend or a relative, according to the Tennessee […]
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 […]
