There are certain signs you should be aware of before you start your search for alcohol rehabilitation centers.  If you or a loved one is experiencing some of these signs, there is a good chance they need help as soon as possible.

The important goal is to recognize the signs before it is too late.  The sooner you get help, the better chance you have of saving your life or the life of someone you love.

Some of the common indicators are:

- Drinking far too much every time you have a drink

- Blacking out while drinking

- Lying to friends and family about driking

- Missing events, work, social engagements because you want to drink instead

- Spending too much money on drinking and no having enough for other things

- Failure to stop drinking

- Problems with health

These are only some of the indicators one should look for before checking in to an alcohol rehabilitation center.  While although an alcoholic can experience maybe only one of these signs at a time, usually they are experiencing multiple.  The sooner the individual gets help, the sooner they can get healthy.

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A top narcotics official from Hong Kong said on Friday that several psychotropic drugs such as ketamine (also known as Special K) are becoming an increasing problem and cause for more abuse center drug treatment programs.

This contradicts a report earlier from the World Health Organization that said ketamine was not a problem.  Narcotics official Sally Wong says that ketamine is infact a major concern right now.

Cannabis, heroin, and ice lead the list of  illegal drugs outside of Asia, but in recent years the abuse of Ketamine and other psychotropic drugs in Hong Kong has increased dramatically.

The majority of these users are under the age of 21 and the age of users continue to drop.   The can be contributed to the drugs being so readily available in schools, parks, lounges, pretty much anywhere.

Ketamine is usually associated with depression and memory loss, but new studies are showing that the drug is also responsible for kidney and bladder dysfunction.

A special meeting is scheduled to take place next week involving authorities from all over China.  They will meet to discuss new strategies on how to best deal with the problem.

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A new study has found that up to 40 percent of UK models suffer from eating disorders.  Facilities such as a bulimia help center seem to be too scarce, and are in dire need.

It is well known that the fashion industry’s obsession with skinny women is most likely driving the increase in eating disorders, but a report by the Model Health Inquiry says that the known cases of anorexia is only the beginning.  There is now an alarmingly increasing number of women with hidden eating disorders.

Anorexia still does seem to be the most prominent of the eating disorders, but other unspecified disorders such as bulimia seem to be getting much worse.  Many models are now purging and drinking large amounts of water in order to conceal their weight.  This of course is highly dangerous because the body is being deprived on potassium which can lead to someone dropping dead.

Bulimia, one of the more dangerous of the hidden disorders, is usually marked by cycles of binging followed by purging in which the individual uses laxatives, vomiting, or diuretics.

The fashion industry in the UK does acknowledge the growing crisis and says they will work towards helping all individuals with eating disorders by getting them the help they deserve.

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Drug Treatment is the next stop stop for the former Vice President’s son.  The former VP Gore said that his son is safe and he is getting treatment.

According to NBC’s Today show, Gore told NBC that he and his wife love their son very much and that they want to keep the whole situation as private as possible.

The arrest of Al Gore’s son on Wednesday overshadowed the work Gore was doing on the Live Earth concerts.   Gore has been planning the even in order to raise awareness of the environment and to raise funds for the Alliance for Climate Protection, which is a organization he leads.

Al Gore III is the youngest of Al Gore’s four children.  Gore had completed substance abuse counseling previously as part of a program to settle the charge he received back in 2003 for marijuana.

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Could cocaine rehab have possibly saved former Gators Cornerback Avery Atkins life?

Police have now labeled his death as suspicious.  On Thursday morning, the body of former University of Flordia cornerback Avery Atkins was found inside his car.  Atkins, 20, was a tremendous force in Florida coach Urban Meyer’s first recruiting class.

At this point police don’t believe that anybody else was involved in the death, but when a healthy man of 20 years dies, it is going to be deemed as suspicious.

Atkins was arrested on Monday in Ormond Beach and charged with possession of crack cocaine.  Atkins had also been arrested three other times in the past three months, two of those times being for drugs.

Atkins only played in six games for the Gators during the 2005, and shortly after was released from his scholarship due to his problems with the law.  Atkins attempted to return to Florida last winter, but ended up dropping out.

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A drug treatment center may be in the near future for Al Gore III who was arrested early Wednesday morning in Laguna Niguel on suspicion of possessing prescription drugs and marijuana. Gore was pulled over after being clocked at about 100mph in a Toyota Prius.

Deputies on the scene said that they smelled marijuana and then searched the car. The search turned up Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, and Adderall (all which Gore did not have a prescription for) as well as less than an ounce of marijuana.

Gore had been previously arrested for possession of marijuana back in 2003 in Bethesda, Md. Gore is an associate publisher of a magazine about philanthropy titled GOOD.

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It’s no surprise that the fashion industry is almost always being blamed for the steadily increasing number of individuals being diagnosed and checking into an eating disorder treatment center.

Many believe that the too skinny models give people an unrealistic picture of what the ideal person should look like.  Because of this many individuals starve themselves to see the desired results.  As of late the industry has started to use more realistic models so that they can defend themselves, but many are saying that clothes simply look better on skinny models, and it’s only about what the clothes look like, not the person inside of them.

Recently supermodel Gisele Bundchen spoke out defending the fashion industry saying that the problem behind most eating disorder may lie within the individuals home and is not the fault of the fashion industry.

Gisele said “I never suffered this problem because I had a very strong family base.  The parents are responsible, not fashion”.

Gisele also went on to say that just because most models are skinny, they aren’t always anorexic.

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A new study coming out of British Columbia reveals that an increasing number of teenagers and young adults are needing eating disorder treatment.

Head of the Eating Disorders Program at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, Dr. Laird Birmingham, said that our society highly underestimates the seriousness of the problems with eating disorders, and without treatment they can actually kill.

Birmingham also goes on to say that the anorexia nervosa mortality rate is over 10 times higher than any other psychiatric disorder.

While although the rate of anorexia has remained steady in British Columbia, the rates of bulimia, and bring and purging have gone up tremendously.

It is estimated that over 65,000 individuals have eating disorders in British Columbia with  most of them being teenagers and young adults.

If you live in British Columbia and suffer from an eating disorder please contact Casa Palmera at 888-481-4481.  We have a highly developed relationship with the Canadian Ministry of Health and can work directly with your referring physician to get your needs met in a timely manner.

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A recent study has shown that depression treatment facilities are lowering the suicide rate by psychotherapy or antidepressant drugs.

A study was conducted on more than 109,000 patients and shows that a recommendation in 2004 to label a black box warning on antidepressants might be without merit. Some of these antidepressants include Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

The original warning described the potential for increased suicideal thoughts among young adults and teenagers who were prescribed the medication.  Closer clinical monitoring of these patients was also urged by the warning.

Researchers are now discovering that since the warning was based on placebo-controlled trials and that they did not originally look at suicide attempts because they were not frequent enough and too rare.

The most recent trial which was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry this July, does infact focus on suicide attempts.  It also finds that depression treatment whether it be psychotherapy or pharmaceutical does effectively fight depression and reduce the amount of suicide attempts.

“Our study indicates there is nothing specific to antidepressant medications that would either make large populations of people with depression start trying to kill themselves or protect them from suicidal thoughts.” says Dr. Greg Simon, a psychiatrist and researcher at Group Health, a Seattle-based nonprofit health care system.

Studies have also shown that if there were to be a risk in taking the medications, it would clearly be outweighed by the benefits.  However the worst option of all would be receiving no treatment whatsoever.

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