Essay on The Rise on Prescription Drug Abuse

Opioid addiction is so prevalent in the healthcare system because of the countless number of hospital patients being treated for chronic pain. While opioid analgesics have beneficial painkilling properties, they also yield detrimental dependence and addiction. There is a legitimate need for the health care system to provide powerful medications because prolonged pain limits activities of daily living, work productivity, quality of life, etc. (Taylor, 2015). Patients need to receive appropriate pain treatment, however, opioids need to be prescribed after careful consideration of the benefits and risks.

While our major access to these drugs is doctors, we cannot simply lay blame on them, as there is not enough knowledge about these treatments to correctly appropriate drugs, and therefore extra is given (Hemphill 373). Alexander of the Department of Epidemiology of the Journal of the American Medical Association, states that “There are serious gaps in the knowledge base regarding opioid use for other chronic nonmalignant pain” (Alexander 1865-1866), which leads to the unfortunately large number of leftover drugs. In fact, the main place that people get their drugs are from leftover prescriptions (Hemphill 373).

Millions of people throughout the world are taking drugs on a daily basis. If you were to ask someone why they take prescription drugs, most people would be taking them for the right reason. However, it’s estimated that twenty percent of people in the United States alone have used prescription drugs for non-medical reasons.1 Prescription drug abuse is a serious and growing problem that often goes unnoticed. Abusing these drugs can often lead to addiction and even death. You can develop an addiction to certain drugs that may include: narcotic painkillers, sedatives, tranquilizers, and stimulants.1 Prescription drugs are the most common abused category of drugs, right next to marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and

The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such.

Many people have developed an addiction due to an injury and which were prescribed painkillers to manage and treat the pain. Prolonged use leads to dependence and once a person is addicted, increasing amounts of drugs are required to prevent feeling of withdrawal. Addiction to painkillers often leads to harder drugs such as heroin due to the black market drug being cheaper. Prescription drugs remain a far deadlier problem and more people abuse prescription medication than cocaine, methamphetamine heroin, MDMA and PCP combined. Drug abuse is ending too many lives too soon and destroying families and communities.

The patients who are in pain requires pain relief, but many of them with chronic pain have trouble with prescribed opioids either due to psychosocial problems

Addressing the people exposed to opioids may reduce the number of people starting and continuing to abuse drugs in the long term. In addition to this suggestion, data found from 2006-2015, the duration of opioids increased by a third suggesting fewer patients choose to start using opioids for pain management, however, patients already on medication continue to do so. This is because once long term opioid users, even when taking their medication as directed by their doctor, eventually develop a tolerance to the drug. A tolerance to pain medication can cause patients to up their dose or take too many medications in a small time frame in order to alleviate the same amount of pain that a smaller dose would have fixed in the past. The risk of developing tolerance is an important conversation to have with a health care professional because in addiction to pain, patients go on to develop a physical dependence to the drug. Physically patients feel pain, illness, and other symptoms; in some cases they are unable to give up the drug. This is when their dependence is classified as an

Doctors don’t exactly know how many people are addicted to pain medication, but one of the reasons so many people are is the availability.

Roughly 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain with an annual cost of $600 billion dollars in health care and a limited number of pain specialist physicians (Harle, et al., 2015). The conditions require the daily use of opioid medications which are being prescribed by primary care providers and providers in the ED. Along with multiple prescribers of opioid medications, the number of prescriptions for these medications has quadrupled from 1999-2013 in correlation with an increase in deaths related to opioid use (Greenwood-Ericksen, Poon, Nelson, Weiner, & Schuur, 2016). The significant increase of opioid related deaths and complications is commonly being referred to as the prescription opioid epidemic and to blame for the most unintentional deaths in the US (Smith, et al., 2015). Though responsible for administering and prescribing opioids to provide pain management, nurse practitioners in the ED have limited patient history and are placed under time constraints. Improved education regarding pain management, clinical practice guidelines and the use of resource tools like the Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP) have been proven effective for reducing opioid related complications (Greenwood-Ericksen et al.,

Base on the sales representatives instructions, physicians started prescribing “opioids”. Shortly after, it was discovered that patient’s pain was relieved only for a small span of time, and when the pain came back it was more intense. Users had developed a resistance to “opioids”. Physicians then kept increasing their patient’s dose of medication, until the drug no longer had any effect on their bodies’ nervous system. Patients become accustomed to the fast release of endorphins cause by “opioids” (a chemical in the brain that naturally diminishes pain perception, and also acts like a sedative). Users began to notice the “rush” of the pain medication, like oxicodone (a fast relieve but short acting drug), oxicontine (extended relieve form of oxicodone) the most addicting form of “opioids”. By now they were not looking to ease their pain other that supply their dependency on the drugs. When Patients were no longer able to get enough medication from doctors, they either bought pills illegally or turned to a cheaper street drug, heroin, (a euphoric drug). “Heroin” affects the same brain receptors and provides the same “rush” effects like “oxicodone” enabling their

Painkillers are on the rise and addicts are trying to feed their habit any way they can. Prescription drugs selling on the street are not cheap and addicts steal, prostitute and rob from anyone they can to feed their addiction. Carry Kurfoot (2010) states, “spin-off crimes such as break-ins, robberies, fraud, and prostitution are on the rise because Oxy, Morphine and all your highly additive drugs are so expensive on the street. One Oxy sells from 15-25 dollars a pill”.Guelph’s neighboring city Cambridge had a Shoppers Drug Mart robbed in October. Pharmacist Lisa Dey (2010) states, “he came in behind the counter and demanded I open the supply cupboards. I gave him a women’s medication which consist of Oxycodone and Demerol”. This was the second robbery of a Shoppers Drug Mart in Cambridge within the last couple of months. This is also another way prescription drugs are getting onto

Prescription drug addiction is a growing epidemic in several cities in the United States. As a result, many cities have begun to have an increase of babies being born addicted to opiates. In rural areas of Maine, this is becoming a more common occurrence, babies born addicted to opiates more than doubled in a five-year span. These women try to stop using drugs for the sake of their unborn children however, this may cause them to have a miscarriage. In this article, it is discussed how the effects of abusing prescribed painkillers affect infants once they are born and the moral dilemma doctors face to try to treat these babies.

There are three types of prescribed abused drugs: opioids, depressants, and stimulants. The most powerful is opioids. Opioids are used to block out pain. Some of these include opanas, oxycontin, and roxicodone, and 5.1 million Americans abuse them regularly (Drugabuse.gov). Some of those pills can cost any where from five dollars a pill all the way up to ninety dollars a pill (Drugs a-z) and could even cost more than that depending on where you live. Some of the street names can be roxy, o.p.s, oxy, and captain coden(Drug abuse.gov). ´“At the age of 20, I became an addict to a narcotic,which began with a prescription following a surgery.¨´-James. People normally become addicted to painkillers because of doctor giving them prescriptions after a major surgery.

The purpose of this report is to show the major problems we face in America if we do not address the misuse of prescription drugs. America’s pain pill and heroin addiction exceeds that of all other countries in the world, statistics from the UN office on Drugs and Crimes show. This report will show emphasis on the misuse of prescription drugs and some of the causes.

There are multiple drugs that are classified as narcotics. Narcotics are defined by Merriam-Webster’s medical dictionary as, “a drug that in moderate does dulls the senses, relieves pain, and induces profound sleep but in excessive doses causes stupor, coma, or convulsions.” This is an issue when these narcotics are being abused or taken out of context. There are prescription narcotics, but there are also the street drugs that are being illegally produced and sold. Prescription pain medications are not a bad thing when they are prescribed and used correctly. Some examples of prescription narcotics are codeine, fentanyl and hydrocodone. While there are beneficial elements to these medications, there are also side effects. Medline Plus explains a few side effects as drowsiness, impaired judgement and a strong desire, or craving, for these medications. This is how the addictions begin to occur.