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  • More pain pills prescribed in suburbs than Chicago

    Chicago Sun-Times / Art Golab

    People living in Chicago’s suburbs are prescribed up to four times as many pain pills per person as those who live in the city, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis shows. In the southern tip of Illinois, it’s up to seven times as much, according to the analysis of federal Drug Enforcement Administration records of the numbers of prescriptions written for the two most popular prescription pain…

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  • Special Segment: Heroin The Hidden Epidemic

    ABC7 News WLS Chicago / Eric Horng

    October 30, 2011 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- A 2010 study by Roosevelt University researchers found the Chicago area had the most heroin-related hospital visits in the nation. The drug is cheap, and it's attracting users everywhere including some who are very young. Today's heroin can be snorted or smoked -- not just injected -- and that's led to a change in the typical user. Increasingly, today's…

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  • White suburbanites going from pain pills to heroin

    Chicago Tribune / Robert McCoppin

    Hurt in a car crash, a Geneva woman got hooked on the painkiller Vicodin. When one doctor stopped prescribing it, she got it from others and was sneaking around so much that her husband thought she was cheating, said her counselor, Jake Epperly. The face of drug addiction, experts say, is increasingly white, suburban and upper-middle class. New users include older adults seeking relief from pain and…

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  • New State Legislation Gives Immunity to Those Reporting a Drug Overdose

    FOX Chicago News / Tisha Lewis

    Springfield, Ill. - The Illinois State Senate gave the green light to legislation that would save lives from drug overdose. Lawmakers said friends are watching friends die from drug overdose. They fear if they call for help they will face prosecution. The goal of the bill is to save lives of drug addicts. It passed unanimously and could become law by the end of next month. State Senator Ira Silverstein…

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  • Prescription drug abuse is Fastest-Growing drug problem in country

    Chicago Sun-Times / MONIFA THOMAS

    David and Gail Katz thought their 25-year-old son Daniel had finally turned the corner on his addiction to prescription painkillers after a year and a half of sobriety. Then, over a two-week period in 2007, Daniel's drug use suddenly "spiraled out of control," his parents said. On June 15, 2007, Daniel, a well-liked former hockey player, died at his best friend's house after overdosing on OxyContin…

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  • Mom. Businesswoman. Alcoholic.

    Tribune reporter / Colleen Mastony

    She stood on the sidelines amid the blankets and camp chairs, a petite, brown-haired woman in a monogrammed polo shirt, cheering as her 7-year-old son sprinted down the soccer field. At halftime, she stepped up with a water bottle and pep talk. And after the game ended in a 4-0 loss, she circulated among the pint-size players as the designated "team mom," passing out apple slices, pretzels and peanut…

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  • Recovery center in Chicago offers clients hope

    SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE / Samantha Cleaver

    In December, after years of alcohol and cocaine abuse, Jim sat alone in his St. Charles home, afraid to leave the house even to pick up the mail. "I was feeling despair," said Jim, who asked that his last name not be used. Addiction "had become so normal. I started to accept it [and felt] that nothing was ever going to change." His family had urged him to seek help many times before, but this time…

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  • Rescued from addiction

    RedEye / Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz

    John David was asleep, coming down from the heroin he'd shot the night before, when his doorbell rang one morning last April in his Humboldt Park apartment. Waiting on his doorstep were his dad, mom, two sisters and their husbands, and his step-grandfather. "I wasn't too sure what was going on," David, now 23, remembers. "I was kind of nervous." What was going on was an intervention into a…

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  • The harsh reality of rehab

    RedEye / Alison Neumer

    Plush oceanside retreats where well-heeled patients recover from drug use, complete with spa treatments and horseback riding, is a rarity. That may be the way Kirsten on "The O.C." recovers, but in the real world, drab hospital hallways with bedrooms and meeting areas are more typical. At New Hope Recovery Center, the 28-day, 14-bed residential program is behind closed doors in a corner of a single…

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  • Life & Meth

    RedEye / Alison Neumer

    Scott Chubb estimates he slept with 1,000 people over seven years of heavy drug use. One-on-one, group sex, multiple encounters a night--"It adds up," he says. "Even when I was in a relationship I was always cheating and had drug use in the back of my mind. Crystal meth would make me have no control over the fact that I had a boyfriend. The sexual urges are so strong that you don't care at that…

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