Opioid Addictions

Opioids, otherwise known as prescription pain medication, are used to treat acute and chronic pain. They are the most powerful pain relievers known. When taken as directed they can be safe and effective at managing pain, however, opioids can be highly addictive. Ease of access helps people get pain medications through their physician or by having friends and family get the medication for them. With their ease of access and being highly addictive the use and misuse of opioids have become a growing epidemic. Patients should be well educated on the affects opioid use can have. More importantly instead of the use of opioids, physicians should look into alternative solutions for pain management. While pain medication is helpful with chronic pain, it is also highly addictive, doctors should be more stringent to whom and how often they prescribe pain medication.

Opioid abuse is a crisis that is plaguing America, in 2015 there we an estimated 15,000 deaths due to prescription opioids*. People are dying, and families are being ripped apart, a radical change needs to occur in order to save lives. Although there are many ways to attempt to solve this problem, here are three solutions that could potentially save lives; decriminalize all drugs, limit prescribed painkillers, and provide access to Narcan (naloxone).

Considerable cautions have been obtained throughout the United States to decrease the misuse of prescription opioids and helps to minimize opioid overdoses and related complications. Even though the pain medications have a significant part in the treatment of acute and chronic pain situations, it sometimes happen that the high dose prescription or the prescribed medications, without having enough monitoring, can create bad outcomes. It is always a dilemma for the providers to find who is really in need of pain medications and to identify those who are questionably misusing opioids.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5, opioid use disorder (OUD) is characterized by patterns of opioid use that are problematic and persist for at least one year (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Evidence of problematic use of opioid is demonstrated through the presence of at least 2 symptoms which include withdrawal, craving, and continued use of opioids despite the disruptions it causes in personal and professional life. The substances used by persons with OUD are heroin and nonmedical pain relievers ([NMPR]; i.e. nonmedical use of opioid pain relievers), and estimates for DSM-5-defined OUD tend to combine the prevalence of use for each of these substances to determine overall

Opioid Addictions can be very difficult to deal with, and admitting you have one and wanting to change can be even tougher. Addictions to opioids do not mainly only affect a person health but also affect your finances. According to Gee & Frank (2017), “The cost of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is about $5,500 per year. However, treatment of the addiction is only one element of the cost of caring for people with opioid dependence” (n.p.). The cost of things just keeps going up. Emergency rooms can be very costly and people typically try to avoid them. Gee & Frank (2017), discus the “average charges for opioid overdose patients treated and released from the emergency department are $3,397 per visit, while those admitted to the hospital racked up an average $29,497 in charges per hospitalization.” (Gee & Frank, 2017).

Opioids are making a resurgence in the black market, evident by the rapidly increasing opioid overdose rates in an increasing fatality count for Maryland every year. The state and local governments have been working to alleviate the issue with increased access to counteractive medications and required rehabilitation. This, however, is draining government funds only to stall, if not worsen, the problem. The best approach to stopping the opioid epidemic of Maryland is to take a similar approach to smoking in treating the situation as a matter of addiction instead of one of drug abuse.

According to NIH, millions of people suffer from opioid use disorder throughout the United States. This epidemic has continued to spread and the numbers of people who are becoming addicted is on the rise so much that the total burden of cost is at 78.5 billion dollars per year for prescription opioid misuse, this includes the cost of addiction treatment, criminal justice services, and health care (NIH, 2017. https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/opioids/opioid-crisis) Unfortunately there does not seem to be an end to this epidemic anytime soon. The numbers are unremarkable; natural and semi-synthetic opioids peeked at 14,427, heroin at 15,446 and synthetic opioids other than methadone at 20,145. That is a total of 50,018 deaths for some type

What is the “Opioid Epidemic”? Why is it so dangerous? These are probably questions someone would ask if not educated on the epidemic.The Opioid Epidemic is a problem within North America that is ravaging thousands of homes and many communities with little to no answers to eradicate the problem.

Opioid use disorders are directly linked to major consequences for individuals as well as society. Opioids include drugs such as Vicodin, oxycodone, morphine, and heroin among others (CITE). Currently, estimates show there are about 20 million people abusing or addicted to opioids countrywide (Bell, 2014). Opioid use can cause decrease quality of life as it is a common cause of familial conflict, homelessness, incarceration, life threatening illness, and death by overdose.

This is inaccurate because prescribed opioids are still addictive. The truth is that people typically turn to street drugs because they offer the same euphoric and satisfying feeling but at a much cheaper cost. Everyone blames the drug-addicts because it was "their fault". But no one goes deeper than that. The Western ideology that "pills heal all ills" needs to end. In some parts of the U.S., pills are prescribed for almost anything you can think of, and doctors, not wanting to disappoint their patients, give more and more medicine and it is unnecessary.

The state of Massachusetts has been fighting a vicious battle with the spread of opioid addiction. Heroin and other opioid drug related addicts have formed a very negative outlook of themselves. A great deal of people view addicts as classic criminals. Addiction is an actual mental illness, something that the addict cannot control. Treating these struggling individuals as criminals is an unnecessary and cruel punishment. The state of Massachusetts needs to break the stigma that all opioid addicts are criminals and starting viewing opioid addiction as a serious mental illness.

The misuse of opioids has been around for over 20 years in the United States. In a 2017 article “Opioid Crisis”, it states that in the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies misled healthcare providers by informing them that patients would not become addicted to opioid painkillers. As a result, healthcare providers too liberally prescribed opioid pain relievers. Opioid abuse rates started to climb and it was clear that these medications were highly addictive. According to Volkow, Frieden, Hyde, and Cha (2014), between 1990 and 2010 death rates from prescription opioid overdose quadrupled in the United States. This surpassed the death rates from cocaine and heroin overdoses combined. Furthermore, they state that the epidemic is a result

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.

Many people consider New Hanover County as a nice place to live. The website 10Best.com recently selected the waterfront in downtown Wilmington as the best American waterfront. However, all nice places have issues under the surface just like alligators living under the surface of the water in the Cape Fear River. The wicked problem facing New Hanover County is the opioid epidemic. Many communities across the United States share in this struggle. Over two million people become dependent on prescription pain pills and street opioids every year in the United States . Of those addicted, the deaths because of a heroin overdose have increased 533% between 2002 and 2016 in the United States. If the opioid crisis

There have been several news coverages on TV and social network about drug overdose of different cases recently and they have risen people’s concern about the problems of drug abuse national-wide. The drug abuse and opioid epidemic is not a new problem to the American society, actually it has been a serious problem for many years. So what is the situation of drug epidemic now, and how can we find effective ways to deal with this problem? A few writers who ponder this question are Nora D. Volkow, Dan Nolan and Chris Amico.