Prescription drug addiction such as the Psychological- and/or Chemical Dependence on pharmaceuticals has become an increasingly escalating problem among people within all classes of society. According to statistics that were recently published on the internet, we may conclude that prescription drug addiction is increasingly exceeding other known addictions such as the consumption of alcoholic beverages, and the frequent abuse of illegal class I controlled substances.
Reasons for the increase in controlled prescription drug abuse, seems to be partly due to their ease of availability. Another reason may be that prescription drug use is widely accepted within our community, opposed to the use of illegal substances which often triggers negative responses from our surroundings; therefore reducing the likelihood of daily use of such illegal substances.
Prescription drugs that are scheduled as controlled substances are frequently legally obtained by patients with a justified medical complaint. They simply go to their local physicians who will than issue a prescription for these drugs. The patient can then consequently fill their medications at a licensed pharmacy. Filling medications is also considered an everyday practice as nobody will look at you differently when entering the Walmart or Walgreens pharmacy to fill a bottle of sleeping pills, whereas making a purchase from a local drug dealer is definitely taboo in the eyes of most citizens.
Patients who receive controlled prescriptions from their doctor may slowly start to depend on these medications and eventually become addicted to some degree. Because prescription drugs that are provided by the pharmacy generally have the image of being safe, they are often not much safer than drugs that come from the street, with as only difference that the quality and purity is guaranteed when your drugs come from the pharmacy. When such patients start to depend on their prescription drugs and consequently fail to inform their primary care physician of initial signs that may indicate addiction, problems will often escalate without appropriate action being taken.
Once the doctor becomes aware of the already developed addiction at a fairly late stage, or when there otherwise is a delay in awareness of the addiction due to the patients’ failure to acknowledge and report their symptoms, intervention to limit further damage to the patients’ mental and/or physical health can be quiet difficult. Full recovery has proven to not always be possible when this stage has been reached.
At this point doctors will often completely stop prescribing the drug that is causing the patients addictive behavior which is good in some cases, but may not always be the best solution. Especially when it concerns extreme prescription drug addicts (mainly seen with opiate pain-killers addicts) complete interruption of treatment will often cause patients to seek illegal sources in an attempt to avoid severe illness as experienced upon interruption. If pain killers are not easily available on the street or when very expensive, a shift to stronger drugs such as Heroin is not uncommon since this generally costs much less opposed to maintaining an Oxycontin addition for example.
The most severe addictions to prescription drugs seem to involve the ongoing use of strong pain medications such as Oxycontin, Dilaudid, Demerol, Percocet, Percodan, Lortab, Norco, Lorcet, and various others. Addictions to lesser degrees are frequently caused due to the ongoing use of benzodiazepines which include medications for anti-anxiety treatment such as Valium and Xanax, and the daily use of sleeping pills which sometimes goes simultaneously with the consumption of different prescription drugs and/or alcohol in an attempt to increase the effects the addict is looking for.
Proof of the extreme addiction caused by prescription pain medications such as Oxycontin can be seen daily in the newspapers where pharmacy robberies have become a hot topic.. During such robberies the patients mainly seem to be interested in CII controlled pain killers, especially Oxycontin, which has proven to be much more addictive as initially presented by the manufacturer. This in turn has lead to many class act law suits, and many destroyed lives of those who used this drug for an ongoing time without being aware of their devastating addictive effects. Usually the robberies are only about the pain killers and money requested, indicating the severity of the addiction issues related to these drugs.
It is sad to see that many severely addicted patients are generally entirely cut off from their supplies by their doctors once addition has been diagnosed. If maintenance therapy with a different medication such as Buprex or Methadone would be offered along with referrals for rehabilitation that meet the patient’s needs, many ‘good’ people could avoid broken family relationships, bankruptcy, and severe legal problems that often arise when such patients start seeking their prescription drugs through illegal channels.
If you read this article and are currently addicted to a prescription drug, or if you know someone who is addicted, please seek help and don’t deny your problems. Addiction to prescription drugs may seem fairly harmless, but truth remains that it has ruined many lives!
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