Hillbilly Heroin: The story of Jon Riley Hays, M.D
Belleville News-Democrat
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
* Oxycontin
* Oxycontin Addiction
* Oxycontin Detox
* Oxycontin Treatment
* Oxycontin Testimonials
* Oxycoontin Withdrawals
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The desire for the high that only opiates can give has turned a prescription painkiller into the illicit drug of choice for many Americans.
By Mike Fitgerald
Only an addict can describe the euphoria that comes from that first outlaw hit of Oxycontin.
Only an addict can describe the sheer torture of trying to quit the narcotic painkiller known as "Hillbilly Heroin."
Jon Riley Hays, M.D., knows about both.
Hays, formerly a family practice physician in the Southern Illinois town of Herrin, first took Oxycontin three years ago when a patient turned in a bottle containing some leftover pills.
Hays, 42, at the time had been suffering excruciating back pain from a car accident, preventing a decent night of sleep. The much weaker painkillers he had been given weren't doing the trick.
Hays knew that ingesting the Oxycontin was wrong. But he also believed the claims of sales representatives that Oxycontin is safe and nonaddictive.
Oxycontin: the addictive cycle begins
Within a few minutes of consuming that first Oxycontin tablet, Hays said, "I felt like Superman. I could work all day, be happy, go home, play with the kids. Do everything that I wanted to do.... I just felt like a million bucks."
The addiction advanced rapidly. Within six weeks, he was stealing Oxycontin from patients, crushing up the pills to mix in a saline solution, loading it into a hypodermic needle and plunging it into his arm. He also bought Oxycontin from local pharmacies under false names.
Trying to get out
Terrified of what he had fallen into, Hays tried to wean himself off Oxycontin on the weekends while keeping his addiction a secret from his wife and two small children. It was a prescription for utter misery.
"You're bedridden," Hays said. "Your bones feel like they're on fire and they're melting flesh."
The worst moment occurred when his daughter, who was 4 years old at the time, walked into the bathroom of his house just as he was about to shoot up some Oxycontin, Hays said.
"Her eyes get very big, of course," Hays recalled. "And she asks me, `Dad, what are you doing?'"
Hays shut his eyes for a moment.
"Addicts are very clever people --- clever to get it, clever with excuses," he said. "I said, `Dad's sick and he's giving himself a shot of vitamins.'"
Eventually, through professional treatment, Hays got off Oxycontin. But not before the Drug Enforcement Administration caught up with him. In May 2002, a judge in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis sentenced Hays to 51 months in federal prison for stealing the drug.
The consequences
Today Hays --- once a student brilliant enough to earn full-ride scholarships to the University of Illinois and the university's college of medicine, a man whose lifelong ambition was to be a small town doctor --- is an inmate at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion.
A few weeks before he entered prison, in early July 2002, Hays sat down with a Belleville News-Democrat reporter to recount his path to and from Oxycontin.
"Just because you're a physician, you don't automatically become immune to addiction," Hays said. "Maybe you're a little more highly educated. But! as in my case, yeah, I knew I was addicted. I knew the warning signs for everything, but it didn't prevent it."
Hays met the reporter at a restaurant in Herrin owned by his nephew. Hays was working at the restaurant as a busboy --- the only job he could find after losing his state medical license.
The former physician sat outside the restaurant on a white wicker chair, gazing down the street on a hot June afternoon as still and quiet as a Norman Rockwell painting. He thought about how so much --- his house, his medical career, the total disruption of his family --- could be squandered in such a brief time.
"A young health professional usually doesn't wake up one morning and say 'I want to become an addict.' Not one with two kids. Not one with a career. It just doesn't happen that way," Hays said.
He paused and thought about what he would say next.
"These drugs are so addictive and powerful," he said, "that it is an incredibly strong-willed person who can take them for a long period of time and not become addicted to them."
Chasing the Oxycontin high
People always have chased the euphoria that comes from opiates and the perverse social cachet their abuse confers. Beginning in the early 1990s, on the East and West coasts, heroin became the chic drug of choice because it had re-emerged in a more powerful form than the heroin of two decades before.
The old stuff had to be cut up, mixed in a solution and injected. The new heroin, the most popular of which was known as "black tar," was strong enough to be snorted, providing a speedy, if sometimes fatal, wallop.
The new heroin slashed through Generation X like a vast scythe, felling hundreds of young men and women in their teens and 20s and flooding emergency rooms with thousands more.
A similar high could be obtained by abusing a wide range of opiate-based prescription painkillers with names like Percodan, Vicodin, Demerol and Dilaudid.
But along came Oxycontin, and it upped the ante in ways no one could have predicted, etching a swath of death and addiction, crime and litigation across America, especially in Maine, West Virginia and Kentucky --- places with big rural populations full of sick, elderly people and those recovering from accidents in mines and on farms.
And now Oxycontin has torn into the metro-east. Consider:
* Hospital emergency rooms in the St. Louis area --- which includes St. Clair and Madison counties --- reported a 41 percent increase in admissions overdoses for Oxycontin and other narcotic painkillers between 2001 and 2002, according to the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network.
* Last week, the Southwest Illinois Treatment Center opened a treatment center at an office park in Fairview Heights. The center provides methadone-based outpatient treatment for up to 200 clients per year addicted to Oxycontin and other opiate-based drugs.
* The Simmons Law Firm, based in East Alton and St. Louis, has signed at least 550 clients from Madison County in response to newspapers ads published in June and July. The clients claim they became addicted to Oxycontin and suffered catastrophic health problems after taking the painkiller in the prescribed manner.
"We were absolutely overwhelmed. Not only were we overwhelmed with the numbers, but we were overwhelmed with the consistency of every single story," said Jeff Cooper, a lawyer with the Simmons firm. "And it's amazing once you start looking into it to find that these folks are just having their lives ruined by something that's supposed to heal them."
Oxycontin is the most popular narcotic painkiller in America, ringing up more than $1 billion in sales and filling nearly 6 million prescriptions in 2002.
Introduced in 1995, it was heralded as a godsend for people who suffer from cancer, severe arthritis and other forms of chronic, extreme pain.
Oxycontin's success stems from a concentrated dose of oxycodone, a form of synthetic morphine. A slow-release mechanism in the pill provides 12 hours of soothing, numbing relief throughout the day, eliminating the need for multiple doses.
But like all opiate-based drugs, Oxycontin can be powerfully addictive because the body quickly builds up a tolerance to it.
Heroin addicts soon gravitated to Oxycontin, said Clifford Bernstein, medical director of the Waismann Institute, a Beverly Hills, Calif., drug treatment center where Oxycontin now accounts for most admissions.
"These heroin people love Oxycontin. You can take a pill and chew it," said Bernstein, whose center uses a revolutionary technique of putting patients under anesthesia and cleansing their bodies with special drugs during withdrawal.
Oxycontin provides "the perfect high," Bernstein said.
"It's a high that doesn't make you lose control and people don't know that you're on the stuff," he said. "And it doesn't give you a hangover. So it's like the perfect high, you know."
It's no coincidence that another nickname for Oxycontin is "Killer." Nationwide, it's been linked to at least 400 deaths by overdose, and possibly hundreds more.
The legal fallout
Cooper said his firm plans to file the first set of personal injury lawsuits by the end of this month against Oxycontin's maker, Purdue Pharma, of Stamford, Conn., and its distributor, and Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Conn.
Cooper blamed the high addiction levels on Purdue Pharma. Citing a pair of whistleblower lawsuits that have been filed within the past month in Connecticut and Florida, Cooper said the evidence will show Purdue Pharma misled federal regulators about Oxycontin's dangerously addictive nature.
Then the company pushed the drug's sale through a marketing campaign aimed at convincing physicians to prescribe the painkiller for even minor pain, Cooper said.
Cooper is far from alone in making this claim.
In December 2001, while testifying before a congressional subcommittee, the head of the DEA blamed Purdue Pharma's "aggressive marketing practices" for making ! Oxycontin readily available.
Purdue Pharma gave its sales representatives incentives to sell big quantities of Oxycontin, and the sales teams encouraged physicians to prescribe the drug by taking them on expense-paid trips, then-DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson told members of Congress.
Purdue Pharma strenuously denied Hutchinson's allegations at the time.
But Hays corroborated assertions that the company aggressively marketed the painkiller. During his days as a physician, Hays said, Purdue Pharma drug reps freely gave out vouchers for Oxycontin that allowed patients to buy them at deep discounts.
"And these drug reps from Purdue Pharmaceuticals said, 'Hey, this drug is very long-acting and it's not addictive,'" said Hays, who, with his wife, Darla, in September 2002 filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis alleging negligence, fraud and breach of warranty against Purdue Pharma and Abbott Laboratories.
Hays is seeking $300,000 in lost wages and more than $50,000 in punitive damages. In May, a federal judge remanded the Hays case to St. Clair County Circuit Court.
Cooper said what he's found with Oxycontin plaintiffs is they start off by taking one Oxycontin pill, "then they take two a day, and then all of a sudden they need three and four and five a day. It's just amazing."
The average addict, Cooper said, is a person between the ages of 35 and 40 who gets hurt at work or playing a softball game and is prescribed Oxycontin.
"And if you follow the timeline, about a year and a half or two years later, they've lost their job, they've lost their kids, they've lost their family, they've lost everything," Cooper said. "And these are people with no history of addiction, no criminal history."
James Heins, a spokesman for Purdue Pharma, denied the charges made by Cooper, as well as charges made by plaintiffs in 300 lawsuits filed nationwide over Oxycontin.
"These allegations are baseless," Heins wrote in an e-mail to the News-Democrat.
Heins pointed out that almost 50 of these lawsuits have been dismissed. What's more, Heins wrote, Oxycontin is a Schedule II controlled substance whose active ingredient, oxycodone, has been available in the United States for more than 70 years and is used in almost 60 different pain medications.
"The package insert has always carried clear warnings regarding the product's abuse potential," he wrote.
Nonetheless, in late 2001 the Food and Drug Administration ordered Purdue Pharma to affix the strongest type of warning, called a "black box warning," on each bottle of Oxycontin in response to complaints that Oxycontin was being improperly prescribed.
How much blame Purdue Pharma must bear for the abuse of Oxycontin, its blockbuster star, remains an issue of debate among drug treatment professionals.
"It's a powerful drug," said Reeve Sams, regional manager for National Specialty Clinics, the Nashville, Tenn.-based chain of 17 clinics that owns the recently opened Southwest Illinois Treatment Center in Fairview Heights.
But Sams declined to put the onus on Oxycontin or its maker.
"And if Oxycontin wasn't there, it would be something else," Sams said. "So that's why I hate specifically to pick on Oxycontin."
Sams acknowledged, though, that at his firm's clinic in West Virginia, "85 percent of our admissions were Oxycontin addictions."
Bernstein, the Waismann Institute medical director, blamed Purdue Pharma for overselling Oxycontin's benefits while downplaying its dangers.
"It's marketed as a long-lasting drug, but really it's a short-acting drug wrapped in a coating of something that's supposed to dissolve slowly," Bernstein said. "You get a good euphoria from the Oxycontin. I don't believe, personally, for one minute that the Purdue Pharma people didn't know that."
Copyright (c) 2003 The Belleville News-Democrat
Before the Point of No Return, Call today: (800)276-7021 or (702)308-6353
Email: info@rapiddetoxlasvegas.com
Medical Director: Board-Certified by American Board of Anesthesiology 1994, former chief of cardiac anesthesia, University of Nevada School of Medicine.
Board-Certified by American Board of Pain Medicine 1997, Clinical Assistant Professor University Nevada School of Medicine.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Jail guard arrested in undercover drug bust
BOURNE — A Barnstable County correctional officer was arrested after buying $400 worth of OxyContin from an undercover police officer Friday, law enforcement officials said.
Ryan Carroll, 31, has been suspended without pay following a two-week investigation by the Cape Cod Drug Task Force that resulted in his arrest at 1 p.m. in the parking lot of the McDonald's restaurant on MacArthur Boulevard, Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings said.
Carroll was not wearing his uniform at the time, Cummings said.
Carroll has been employed as an officer at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility for eight years and has had a good work record, Cummings said. An investigation of his conduct at the jail found no evidence that he was supplying drugs to inmates, he said."That was a concern for us," the sheriff said.
Carroll, a married father of two, came under suspicion when an informant for the Cape Cod Drug Task Force told an officer that the prison guard was looking to purchase the highly addictive opiate-based painkiller OxyContin. The sheriff helped the drug task force investigate Carroll.
"We were working with the Cape Cod Drug Task Force, which did an excellent job," Cummings said.
Carroll was arraigned Friday in Falmouth District Court for possession of OxyContin. He purchased 20 pills for $400 from an undercover officer, according to Cummings.
Carroll, whose address is listed in Plymouth according to Internet records, has been placed on unpaid leave until a termination hearing can be scheduled. The hearing could be held as soon as this week, the sheriff said.
"It shows that no one is immune from OxyContin," Cummings said. "It's a real problem here. ... He has two young children and was in the process of buying a house. This was not good timing for him."
Carroll's arrest tarnishes the work of the 366 employees of the sheriff's department, most of whom do an excellent job, the sheriff said.
The arrest also brings back memories of 2006, when five sheriff's department employees were arrested in a single year. Beginning in January and progressing all through 2006, five officers were charged with various crimes, including shoplifting, domestic assault, assault and battery on a police officer, weapons charges, and drunken driving.
The spree led Cummings to employ a personnel consultant, who made some changes in the hiring process but nothing radical, Cummings said. "He recommended we do a psychological screening of all our employee, but it would be too cost prohibitive," the sheriff said.
Carroll's drug bust is the first arrest of a sheriff department employee since the 2006 incidents, Cummings said. And it's the first arrest of a sheriff's employee for drugs during Cummings' tenure, he added.
Ryan Carroll, 31, has been suspended without pay following a two-week investigation by the Cape Cod Drug Task Force that resulted in his arrest at 1 p.m. in the parking lot of the McDonald's restaurant on MacArthur Boulevard, Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings said.
Carroll was not wearing his uniform at the time, Cummings said.
Carroll has been employed as an officer at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility for eight years and has had a good work record, Cummings said. An investigation of his conduct at the jail found no evidence that he was supplying drugs to inmates, he said."That was a concern for us," the sheriff said.
Carroll, a married father of two, came under suspicion when an informant for the Cape Cod Drug Task Force told an officer that the prison guard was looking to purchase the highly addictive opiate-based painkiller OxyContin. The sheriff helped the drug task force investigate Carroll.
"We were working with the Cape Cod Drug Task Force, which did an excellent job," Cummings said.
Carroll was arraigned Friday in Falmouth District Court for possession of OxyContin. He purchased 20 pills for $400 from an undercover officer, according to Cummings.
Carroll, whose address is listed in Plymouth according to Internet records, has been placed on unpaid leave until a termination hearing can be scheduled. The hearing could be held as soon as this week, the sheriff said.
"It shows that no one is immune from OxyContin," Cummings said. "It's a real problem here. ... He has two young children and was in the process of buying a house. This was not good timing for him."
Carroll's arrest tarnishes the work of the 366 employees of the sheriff's department, most of whom do an excellent job, the sheriff said.
The arrest also brings back memories of 2006, when five sheriff's department employees were arrested in a single year. Beginning in January and progressing all through 2006, five officers were charged with various crimes, including shoplifting, domestic assault, assault and battery on a police officer, weapons charges, and drunken driving.
The spree led Cummings to employ a personnel consultant, who made some changes in the hiring process but nothing radical, Cummings said. "He recommended we do a psychological screening of all our employee, but it would be too cost prohibitive," the sheriff said.
Carroll's drug bust is the first arrest of a sheriff department employee since the 2006 incidents, Cummings said. And it's the first arrest of a sheriff's employee for drugs during Cummings' tenure, he added.
Bills Would Let Mass. Tally Drug Overdoses
BOSTON -- Lawmakers are weighing a series of bills designed to give Massachusetts a more comprehensive tally of OxyContin and heroin overdoses.
The state has struggled in recent years to get a handle on the problem as the number of overdoses has crept steadily upward.
On Tuesday, the Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Health holds a public hearing on a series of the bills targeting drug overdoses.
One would require every doctor treating someone suffering from an overdose to file a report with the state Department of Public Health detailing the type of drug used and the patient's age, race, gender and hometown, while keeping their identity private.
A goal of the legislation is to look for trends so the state can better combat overdoses.
The state has struggled in recent years to get a handle on the problem as the number of overdoses has crept steadily upward.
On Tuesday, the Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Health holds a public hearing on a series of the bills targeting drug overdoses.
One would require every doctor treating someone suffering from an overdose to file a report with the state Department of Public Health detailing the type of drug used and the patient's age, race, gender and hometown, while keeping their identity private.
A goal of the legislation is to look for trends so the state can better combat overdoses.
My turn: Drug testing students won't solve Juneau's drug problem
When people ask what I would do about the present drug epidemic, my first response would be to try not to make it worse. About drug testing in particular, I suggest Richard C. Cowan's article "How the Narcs Created Crack: A War Against Ourselves" (National Review, Dec. 5, 1986).
Cowan introduces the "Iron Law of Prohibition" which says that the more vigorously substances are persecuted the more concentrated they become. It's worth noting that crack, heroin, cocaine, angel dust and meth are all still around, even though their status as epidemics has fallen off the front page.
It's also worth noting that at least three of the so-called Drug Czars - Robert DuPont, Carlton Turner and D. Ian MacDonald - left their national positions and went into the private sector selling drug testing kits. It's very lucrative.
Drug testing was something John Walters, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George W. Bush, campaigned vigorously for. Walters wanted drug screening to be part of every medical examination for everybody, just like taking your blood pressure.
Everyone, including kids, knows if you take heroin, oxy, cocaine and other drugs that can kill you, you'll test negative in 8-48 hours. Marijuana has never had a recorded fatal overdose, but fat soluble metabolites may test positive for 30 days. The Juneau drug testing plan is to "test for everything," including marijuana. We can't test for everything since everything isn't invented yet. But even if we could, when you Google "beating a drug test" you get a million and a quarter hits.
In my mind the problem isn't permissiveness with the kids, but permissiveness with the drug companies. In 2002, the top 10 pharmaceutical companies made more profit than the other 490 companies in the Fortune 500 combined. From 2000 to 2004, retail sales of commonly abused drugs - such as OxyContin and psychotropics - more than doubled in America. An army of more than 100,000 drug reps works to get doctors to write more prescriptions. They sell us the poison. They sell us the antidote.
A drug war and pulling down our pants for drug testing won't solve that. The drug war has made our country the world's leading jailer, but convicts can still get illegal drugs in maximum security prisons.
As Cowan predicted "We are not going to be drug free. Just unfree."
• Dick Callahan is a Juneau resident.
Before the Point of No Return, Call today: (800)276-7021 or (702)308-6353
Email: info@rapiddetoxlasvegas.com
Medical Director: Board-Certified by American Board of Anesthesiology 1994, former chief of cardiac anesthesia, University of Nevada School of Medicine.
Board-Certified by American Board of Pain Medicine 1997, Clinical Assistant Professor University Nevada School of Medicine.
Cowan introduces the "Iron Law of Prohibition" which says that the more vigorously substances are persecuted the more concentrated they become. It's worth noting that crack, heroin, cocaine, angel dust and meth are all still around, even though their status as epidemics has fallen off the front page.
It's also worth noting that at least three of the so-called Drug Czars - Robert DuPont, Carlton Turner and D. Ian MacDonald - left their national positions and went into the private sector selling drug testing kits. It's very lucrative.
Drug testing was something John Walters, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George W. Bush, campaigned vigorously for. Walters wanted drug screening to be part of every medical examination for everybody, just like taking your blood pressure.
Everyone, including kids, knows if you take heroin, oxy, cocaine and other drugs that can kill you, you'll test negative in 8-48 hours. Marijuana has never had a recorded fatal overdose, but fat soluble metabolites may test positive for 30 days. The Juneau drug testing plan is to "test for everything," including marijuana. We can't test for everything since everything isn't invented yet. But even if we could, when you Google "beating a drug test" you get a million and a quarter hits.
In my mind the problem isn't permissiveness with the kids, but permissiveness with the drug companies. In 2002, the top 10 pharmaceutical companies made more profit than the other 490 companies in the Fortune 500 combined. From 2000 to 2004, retail sales of commonly abused drugs - such as OxyContin and psychotropics - more than doubled in America. An army of more than 100,000 drug reps works to get doctors to write more prescriptions. They sell us the poison. They sell us the antidote.
A drug war and pulling down our pants for drug testing won't solve that. The drug war has made our country the world's leading jailer, but convicts can still get illegal drugs in maximum security prisons.
As Cowan predicted "We are not going to be drug free. Just unfree."
• Dick Callahan is a Juneau resident.
Before the Point of No Return, Call today: (800)276-7021 or (702)308-6353
Email: info@rapiddetoxlasvegas.com
Medical Director: Board-Certified by American Board of Anesthesiology 1994, former chief of cardiac anesthesia, University of Nevada School of Medicine.
Board-Certified by American Board of Pain Medicine 1997, Clinical Assistant Professor University Nevada School of Medicine.
5 Keys to Happiness
Here are five ways — some admittedly challenging — to help you get that much-needed mood boost:
1. Pick good parents
In Happy Land, genes trump environmental factors, according to the experts. And a study in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science scores another point for the gene team: Differences in DNA that could explain why some people tend to have an extra bounce in their step might also underlie the tendency to be more emotionally stable and socially and physically active.
Genes do not provide free passes from the doldrums, and other external factors will still try to mow you down. But, heredity could provide some people with a horde of happiness that they can draw from when the good times aren’t rolling.
And Canadian researchers' ability to genetically stifle depression in mice in 2006 indicates that human happiness could one day be improved by manipulating genes. This was the first time science throttled the throes of any organism. Mice bred to be void of the gene, called TREK-1, acted as if they had been downing anti-depressants for at least three weeks.
2. Give it away
It only takes $5 spent on others to make you happier on a given day, according to a 2008 study. And selfless acts can also help your marriage become a more enjoyable experience for you and your spouse.
After performing good deeds, people are happier and feel their life has more purpose. But is the act selfless if you expect something in return? Maybe it just depends on how you look at it.
3. Ponder this
Think of a happy place. And you, too, like Happy Gilmore, might sink that putt and earn back your grandmother's house — or overcome your own hurdle.
Humans are more resilient than we think and can endure trying times, as demonstrated in a 2005 study that tracked mood changes in dialysis patients. They were in a good mood most of the time despite having their blood cleaned three times a week for at least three months. But healthy patients envisioned a miserable life when asked to imagine adhering to this demanding schedule.
As Winston Churchill said, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
4. Work out
Consistently breaking a sweat, along with medication and counseling can help people battling depression by sapping lonely and vulnerable feelings.
Exercise improves one's state of mind in part by affecting the body's levels of two chemicals: cortisol and endorphins. The adrenal glands of angry or scared people produce cortisol. This increases blood pressure and blood sugar, weakens the immune response and can lead to organ inflammation and damage. But working out burns cortisol, restoring the body's normal levels.
Running, biking or using an aerobic exercise machine also causes the brain to release endorphins — the body's natural pain relievers — into the bloodstream. The body foregoes the negative side effects of drugs while still experiencing a natural high. To gain the most from your workout, make sure its intensity reflects your stress level. And challenge your body to continually adapt by varying the exercise’s length and intensity.
5. Live long
If you have the right genes and are selfless, optimistic and active but still find yourself down in the dumps, just give it some time.
A study of 2 million people from 80 nations released in January found that depression is most common among adults in their mid-40s. Among Americans, the worst of times hit women around age 40 and men about age 50.
But with age humans are more inclined to filter out the negatives while focusing on what they enjoy.
Americans in their golden years tend to see the glass as half full, despite their increased doctor visits and chemo treatments. After battling cancer, heart disease, diabetes or other health-related obstacles, 500 independent Americans from age 60 to 98 rated their own degree of successful aging as 8.4 on average, with 10 being the highest in a 2005 study.
Happiness, it seems, takes time.
1. Pick good parents
In Happy Land, genes trump environmental factors, according to the experts. And a study in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science scores another point for the gene team: Differences in DNA that could explain why some people tend to have an extra bounce in their step might also underlie the tendency to be more emotionally stable and socially and physically active.
Genes do not provide free passes from the doldrums, and other external factors will still try to mow you down. But, heredity could provide some people with a horde of happiness that they can draw from when the good times aren’t rolling.
And Canadian researchers' ability to genetically stifle depression in mice in 2006 indicates that human happiness could one day be improved by manipulating genes. This was the first time science throttled the throes of any organism. Mice bred to be void of the gene, called TREK-1, acted as if they had been downing anti-depressants for at least three weeks.
2. Give it away
It only takes $5 spent on others to make you happier on a given day, according to a 2008 study. And selfless acts can also help your marriage become a more enjoyable experience for you and your spouse.
After performing good deeds, people are happier and feel their life has more purpose. But is the act selfless if you expect something in return? Maybe it just depends on how you look at it.
3. Ponder this
Think of a happy place. And you, too, like Happy Gilmore, might sink that putt and earn back your grandmother's house — or overcome your own hurdle.
Humans are more resilient than we think and can endure trying times, as demonstrated in a 2005 study that tracked mood changes in dialysis patients. They were in a good mood most of the time despite having their blood cleaned three times a week for at least three months. But healthy patients envisioned a miserable life when asked to imagine adhering to this demanding schedule.
As Winston Churchill said, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
4. Work out
Consistently breaking a sweat, along with medication and counseling can help people battling depression by sapping lonely and vulnerable feelings.
Exercise improves one's state of mind in part by affecting the body's levels of two chemicals: cortisol and endorphins. The adrenal glands of angry or scared people produce cortisol. This increases blood pressure and blood sugar, weakens the immune response and can lead to organ inflammation and damage. But working out burns cortisol, restoring the body's normal levels.
Running, biking or using an aerobic exercise machine also causes the brain to release endorphins — the body's natural pain relievers — into the bloodstream. The body foregoes the negative side effects of drugs while still experiencing a natural high. To gain the most from your workout, make sure its intensity reflects your stress level. And challenge your body to continually adapt by varying the exercise’s length and intensity.
5. Live long
If you have the right genes and are selfless, optimistic and active but still find yourself down in the dumps, just give it some time.
A study of 2 million people from 80 nations released in January found that depression is most common among adults in their mid-40s. Among Americans, the worst of times hit women around age 40 and men about age 50.
But with age humans are more inclined to filter out the negatives while focusing on what they enjoy.
Americans in their golden years tend to see the glass as half full, despite their increased doctor visits and chemo treatments. After battling cancer, heart disease, diabetes or other health-related obstacles, 500 independent Americans from age 60 to 98 rated their own degree of successful aging as 8.4 on average, with 10 being the highest in a 2005 study.
Happiness, it seems, takes time.
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