Devils in the Medicine Chest

Last week I went to the Centers for Disease Control and banged heads with other public health policy types over this problem: how can we stem the burgeoning epidemic of prescription drug overdoses?

A question near and dear to my academic heart, the one I cut my doctoral teeth on some years ago.

Prescription drug abuse is a huge problem: 1 in 14 US citizens non-medically use medications like OxyContin, Vicodin, Ativan, and Adderall. Where do they get the stuff? Not Mexico, the internet, or even from their docs - Almost 60% report families and friends as their source.

We sat around in a double-tiered u-shaped configuration, a bunch of experts from the FDA, the CDC, NIDA, SAMHSA, DEA, State govs, and the Ivory Towers - even a judge - and listened to each other pontificate on the pros and cons of drug courts, serialized prescription forms, electronic monitoring programs. Yet, despite expansion of these programs, prescription drug abuse continues to rise, even as the use of cocaine, heroin, and rave drugs declines.

Sitting in the windowless room for two days, it occurred to me these programs barely make a dent in the abuse problem because they come at the wrong point in the food chain: after a doc has prescribed, after a pharmacist has dispensed, after a patient has gotten hooked and in trouble.

It seemed to me the solution to prescription drug abuse is pretty damn straightforward: Just lock the stuff up.

And maybe educate everyone that OxyContin isn't quite as innocuous as candy.

***

Last night my 9 year-old son spent an hour on the internet, researching the question of Santa. His conclusion made me weep - why DO they grow up so fast?

The tree’s up, cookie supplies are in, here come the holy days.


THE READING... Ooooh, having so much fun: Wally Lamb, Dirk Wittenberg, Julia Glass, and so on and so on...

THE WRITING… A children’s story – can you believe? And it even has a happy ending. What’s wrong with me?

LISTENING TO... The KILLERS Day and Age. Good stuff. As a writer, though, I just want to edit HUMAN - shouldn't it be dancerS, not dancer?

For the frugal readers among you... FREEBIE BOOKS FROM BLEAK HOUSE and INTRIGUE PRESS

Peace, Linda

Pure Geniosity and Other Factoids

Like Christmas in September, the MacArthur Foundation awarded half-million Genius Awards to 25 scientists, humanitarians, and, yes, artists. Diverse crowd this year. I'm familiar with the work of several, including:

--Sally Temple, neuroscientist
--Chimamandu Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian author (Half of a Yellow Sun)
--Diane E. Meier, geriatrician
--Peter J. Pronovost, critical care doc working in hospital medical error control

***

The irony does not escape me: a line of my research, looking at treatment patterns and outcomes for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is funded by the same company that pays the medical bills for my parents' cigarette-induced cancer and emphysema

***

Yesterday was the first day of autumn. The morning opened with a cacophony of rogue crickets outside my writing window, a lone deer munching on the withered remains of azalea leaves and iris. The cold approaches, time to prepare for the hunkering down, the inner withdrawal...

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Look for October's issue of THE SUN on your newstands. A piece of mine is in the Readers Write column, an essay on waiting to miscarry my son. My first print publication in a literary journal...

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THE WRITING... It goes. Officially past the half-way mark of revising BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. As for PURE, much thought and notes. I have a stucture emerging, several voices... this is the fun part, the imagining, the flexibility before the written words are committed. The most important part of the process, perhaps. Fascinated by my ability to carry 2 projects in my head at the same time.

***

THE READING... Reading for structure and voice, to fuel PURE... Just finished A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR by John Irving. It has been years since I read him; I forgot what a marvelous story-teller he is. Wonderful book, layers upon layers of stories told as books. A writer's novel. In deep now with THREE JUNES by Julia Glass, who taught a seminar at THE MUSE AND THE MARKETPLACE. Tricky - she interweaves past and present voice seamlessly to change voice and time. Brilliant.

Peace, Linda