Florida Detox patients report our Fentanyl Rapid Detox eliminates 90 to 95 percent of the painful, uncomfortable Fentanyl withdrawal symptoms. 

Florida Detox performs safe Fentanyl rapid detox, in a dedicated detox unit in a hospital presently rated in the top five percent in the United States and consistently rated in the top 10 percent.  Dr. Sponaugle has perfected advanced anesthesia techniques which absolutely prevent dangerous blood pressure and pulse increases, during anesthesia assisted opiate detoxification.  Since heart rate and blood pressure remain at safe normal resting levels, our patients rest quietly, breathing unassisted, without tremors or convulsions, during anesthesia. Fatigue and muscle soreness are reduced by our advanced anesthesia technique, since exhausting tremors and convulsions are eliminated.

Florida Detox eliminates psychological craving by accurately diagnosing and effectively treating anxiety, depression, insomnia, attention deficit disorders and hormonal imbalances which  usually drive opiate dependency. Neurotransmitter and hormone testing have proven and enhanced our highly accurate diagnosis, of disorders driving addiction.  Florida Detox opiate treatment includes effective followup for three months.

Many of our patients report “the fog has lifted” or the “blinds have opened,” after they experience a successful opiate detoxification, with effective hormonal and neurotransmitter balancing.  Accounts of this phenomenon are posted on our website. Deficient brain blood flow distribution usually normalizes approximately one year after opiate abstinence is achieved.  In the interim, hormonal and neurotransmitter imbalances can be effectively treated to reduce or eliminate attention deficits, depression, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue, lethargy and chronic pain.  Nutritional and antifungal treatments are also helpful.

Naltrexone

Florida Detox does not use Naltrexone implants. Naltrexone implants at some centers have caused infection, producing scarring and cellulitis. Florida Detox uses Naltrexone, after anesthesia, to prevent opiates from reattaching to the opiate receptor, while the liver finishes metabolizing or breaking the opiates down. We have not found it necessary to continue Naltrexone, more than 2 to 4 weeks, in most cases. Although Naltrexone can prevent physical craving for opiates, it does not eliminate psychological craving. 


Fentanyl can cause hormonal imbalances

Opiate use severely decreases testosterone, while prolactin and cortisol are often increased. Thyroxine (T4) thyroid hormone often decreases, during opiate withdrawal. We have also found deficient DHEA sulfate levels in some patients we have treated for opiates.  We frequently prescribe testosterone and thyroid hormone to depleted patients.  Depression has decreased when we recommended DHEA for patients who tested with lowered levels.  Opiate patients who gained excessive weight, due to opiate induced hypothyroidism, often look ten to twenty years younger, when they return for followup, after adequate hormonal treatment.Since dopamine is the inhibitory hormone for prolactin release, elevated prolactin levels, frequently indicate dopamine deficiency.  Dopamine deficiency also requires correction to produce a successful recovery from opiate dependence.


Fentanyl Deaths Increasing 

Feature: Fentanyl Death Toll Mounts as Authorities Belatedly Act 5/26/06
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/437/fentanyl.shtml
A wave of fatal drug overdoses that has killed dozens of people in recent weeks struck Detroit with a vengeance over the weekend, leaving more than 20 people dead after injecting "heroin" that has turned out to mostly or entirely fentanyl, a synthetic opiate 80 times as powerful as morphine. Federal and local authorities are now ringing alarm bells, but with fentanyl-related overdoses occurring at a lower rate for months in Detroit and clusters of deaths breaking out in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and the Mid-Atlantic seaboard in recent weeks, some are asking what took so long.

"I've never seen it this bad," said Harry Simpson, director of substance abuse services for Detroit's Community Health Awareness Group, which runs drug user harm reduction programs, including a needle exchange, in the city. "I'm a recovering injector myself and I've been 22 years in recovery, and in all the years I've been on the drug scene, I've never seen anything like this."

Fentanyl mixed with heroin or sold as heroin has been causing overdose deaths in small numbers since last fall, but alarms bells did not begin going off until a couple of weeks ago, when clumps of people started dropping dead in the Chicago and Philadelphia areas. Chicago authorities reported 10 fatal overdoses and dozens of non-fatal ones, while the death toll in the Mid-Atlantic states is near 30 in the past month. In Detroit, although fentanyl-related overdoses killed 106 people between September and April, officials took no action until 23 people died over the weekend.

The father of one overdose victim complained that it took a mass outbreak of deaths before authorities responded. Ryan Richter, 18, died in February after taking fentanyl. "He and his friends were experimenting," Randy Richter told the Detroit Free Press. At the time, Richter said, the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office told him it was aware of the dangers of the lethal fentanyl-heroin mix. "Who is to say how many lives would have been saved if they let this information out then?" Richter asked.

This week in Detroit, the authorities got serious. At the request of Michigan health officials, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta sent two investigators to look into the overdoses -- the first time the CDC has looked at fentanyl use.

The investigators will stay through this week, Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano announced as he warned residents to watch out. "Law enforcement's concern is it's being distributed in the Metro area on the street and it's very point," he warned.

The local DEA office has also gotten involved. "Samples are being tested to see if we can determine if it's pharmaceutical grade or from a clandestine laboratory," DEA agent Christopher Hoyt said at a Tuesday press conference.

Officials are concerned because they don't know if the wave of fentanyl overdoses is a fluke or a harbinger of the future. "We don't know the extent of the problem," said Robert Corso, DEA special agent in charge in Detroit.

Back in the Mid-Atlantic states, law enforcement has responded energetically, seizing thousands of bags of fentanyl-laced dope in the past two weeks. The response in terms of reducing the harm to injection drug users has been less spectacular.

"I think it is just incomprehensible that over a hundred people died in such a short period of time and there wasn't a full-scale community alert put out," said Simpson. "If you have bird fall out of a tree dead, you get a big mobilization to see if it had a virus. A damned bird. If somebody gets sick with salmonella, it's a full-blown emergency, but we're talking about a hundred people dead and nothing happened. To not have a state of emergency to save these people's lives is just unconscionable."   EMPHASIS ADDED

Drug users are seen as worthless, Simpson said. "It is because of the stigma associated with drug users, they're seen as throwaway people. But they're our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and they deserve better. People are still dying here, but once we get a handle on this, we'll go back and try to kick the health department in the CENSORED for their failure to act sooner," he vowed.

But for now, at least, public officials are sounding the alarm. In addition to Ficano's press conference, authorities have contacted hospitals, emergency care providers, and the media to put out the warning. And Detroit harm reductionists are hitting the streets, too.

"We're trying to get the word out on the street to the people who are at risk," said Simpson. "We are using our needle exchange program to go into areas where the users are and we're putting out flyers and brochures. We've got outreach workers talking to people and giving them information about what they can do and how do deal with overdoses. We don't know where this is coming from and we're trying to get as close to the source as we can," he said.

The DEA, the CDC, and state and local authorities may understand that people are dying, Simpson said, but they can't get close to the users. "That's critical because we need a targeted effort to track this thing as close as we can. We're talking to people who have used this stuff or have had ODs around them and trying to find out what is consistent so we can warn people 'If you're cooking up drugs and it does this, then watch out.'"

The effort is going state-wide, Simpson said. "We're doing an outreach blitz, if you will. We're having an emergency call to arms to bring outreach workers from across the state to Detroit to inform and train them around OD prevention and identification. We need these outreach workers, because our target audience isn't necessarily paying attention to TV and radio ads."

The Detroit effort is getting help from the national Harm Reduction Coalition, which Fedex-ed thousands of informational pamphlets and brochures to the city this week, Simpson said. "I called them because we didn't have any appropriate materials," he recalled, "and we really appreciate them doing that."

"These deaths represent the tip of the iceberg," said Harm Reduction Coalition executive director Allan Clear. "Thousands of fatal overdoses occur every year -- but we know that we can reduce overdose deaths by giving drug users the right information, training, and tools."

For now, said Simpson, authorities are doing the right thing. "They are doing all the public health things that should be done, but this is horrible. We've lost 125 lives here since September. The city, the county, and the feds should have been all over this six months ago."

Legalization would effectively put and end to such outbreaks of overdoses and similar problems -- in a regulated market, users would know what they were getting most of the time. In the meanwhile, the harm reductionists have their work cut out for them saving lives that need not have been so endangered and cleaning up some of the mess created by drug prohibition.


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Prescription pain patch abuse overdose epidemic

June 30, 2005
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Drug abusers are increasingly turning to a slow-release form of a powerful painkiller for a quick and dangerous high, University of Florida researchers warn. The trend is raising alarm as the number of people dying from an overdose of the drug fentanyl, an opioid 100 times more potent than morphine, rises.

Addicts are misusing a clear patch that transfers a controlled dose of fentanyl through the skin into the bloodstream over the course of a few days, UF experts say. The adhesive patch is typically prescribed to treat postoperative pain or chronic pain conditions, but in some cases is being misused, often with deadly consequences.

“Because the patch is a sustained release form of the drug, if one withdraws the 72 hours’ worth of drug and uses it in a form that it wasn’t designed to be used for, then it can rapidly result in death,” said the study’s lead researcher, Bruce Goldberger, director of toxicology and an associate professor in the departments of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine and psychiatry in UF’s College of Medicine.

Patients who are prescribed the patch must be made aware of the potential dangers of misuse, Goldberger added.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement records cited in the UF study, presented this month in Orlando at the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, show abuse of the patch resulted in the death of 115 people in Florida last year. While the number of fatalities linked to the patch is still one-quarter the number associated with other drugs abused, such as methadone or hydrocodone, the number of sudden deaths from overdosing on fentanyl has been on the rise during the past few years — not just in Florida but also nationwide, researchers found.   EMPHASIS ADDED

“We have seen an increased use and abuse of the patch form of fentanyl for the past five years or so,” Goldberger said. “This is a recent finding related to the prescription of fentanyl patches.”

In many cases, people who died from overdosing on the drug were able to easily remove the full dose of fentanyl from the patch and take the entire three-day amount at once, either by injecting, ingesting or smoking it.

In some cases, the deceased sought a state of euphoria by applying multiple patches simultaneously.

It is not always clear from the law enforcement records where people who overdosed obtained the drug, whether from a prescription of their own or from one that had been stolen or otherwise not used according to doctor’s instructions, the group reported.

“Oftentimes we don’t know where the patch comes from. Sometimes it is from someone who had a prescription or it was purchased on the street or acquired from a friend, so it has been diverted to them,” Goldberger said.

Goldberger’s team, which includes Dr. Mark Gold, a distinguished professor with UF’s McKnight Brain Institute and chief of the division of addiction medicine, has been focused on the use and abuse of prescription drugs. In the past few years his team has seen increased abuse of methadone, and now fentanyl.

“Based on our study we’re recommending that physicians better educate their patients on the use of the patch, and, as a result, we might see lower numbers in fentanyl-related deaths in the state of Florida,” Goldberger said.

Dr. Albert Ray, medical director of Pain Medicine Solutions in Miami and a past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, said that the UF study brings necessary attention to the importance of physician and patient education regarding addictive disorders.

“There is nothing wrong with the patch, the problem is with addictive disorders,” Ray said. “Any drug has the potential for abuse. This study is useful for raising awareness of the need for educating prescribing physicians on the importance of screening and monitoring their patients for addictive disorders in order to help decrease the abuse of the patch.”
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