Lindsay Lohan, Lethal and Legal, it can happen to you too…

Details of starlet Lindsay Lohan’s being sentenced to jail this week, trouble stemming from her use of Alcholo and Drugs, included her probation report and the list of drugs she is allowed to take and has been taking for a long time as prescribed by doctors. This list of legal and Lethal drugs is Zoloft (antidepressant), Trazodone (antidepressant), Adderall (stimulant), Nexium (acid reflux) and the powerful, addictive painkiller Dilaudid.

One side effect of the Dilaudid is euphoria, a kind that drug abuse counselors liken to a heroin high. Dilaudid was allegedly one of the drugs taken by the late Michael Jackson at the time of his death. Adderall is a mix of Amphetamine and Dextroamphetamine, which is also highly abused by school aged children as well as young people and adults of all ages.

Far from being a reflection of celebrity excess, these lists of drugs are popping up in small towns, big cities, and rural towns where the biggest celebrity may be last year`s Prom Queen, with unintentional overdosing on legal drugs has become a tragic and rapidly growing trend.

A famous person`s cocaine use may be the stuff of tabloid headlines, but legal drug abuse is this country`s biggest drug problem right now.

According to the CDC(Centers for Disease Control), more than 26,o00 people died from accidental drug overdoses in the United States in 2006, with half of those attributed to legal pain medications such as Oxycontin, Vicodin, Codeine, Dilaudid and others. Unintentional drug overdose deaths has been on the general upswing since the 1970s, but alarmingly it more than doubled between 1999 and 2006. In 2008 alone, it landed 1 million people in U.S. emergency rooms.

The CDC says, the increase in deaths is because of prescription painkillers. Doctors are over prescribing them, and giving patients too many in appropriate scenarios, such as following a major surgery. The pills and liquids stick around, become addictive, sometimes land the patient in the ER or the grave.

Sometimes the patient will stash the drugs for later, but are found and abused by a non-patient, or the patient sells it on the black market to a nation addicted to euphoria, especially teens and young people.

In the last 15 years, the medical community’s aggressive approach to pain management has lead to a 10-fold increase in opioid painkiller prescriptions. These opioid medications can and have also lead to heroin addictions as well. When a legal pill form or liquid form of drug is no longer available, people have turned to the next best and deadly thing; Heroin.

Opiates medications being the main cause of Slipknot Bassists Paul Gray’s death, whether prescribed or obtained illegally, Morphine and Fentanyl are also abused on teh street market by kids and young adults everywhere too.