Pain Medication Benefits

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.

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention 44 people die each day in the United States of America due to an overdose of a prescription painkiller (“Joining the Fight”, n.d.). A staggering 2.1 million people in the United States suffer from substance abuse disorders and the number of people using opioids for nonmedical uses is continuing to rise (Volkow, 2014). Who is to blame for these outrageous numbers? I believe that the patient and the pharmaceutical companies are to blame for this on-growing problem. Some of the largest contributing factors to these growing statistics is that the pharmaceutical companies have very aggressive marketing of the medicines, which in turn leads to a rising number of prescriptions written for

Prescription pain medications are supposed to improve the health and well-being of an individual. Oxycontin, an opioid drug, is meant to help people manage their pain symptoms; however, many people are unaware that there is a danger of abuse of receiving drugs prescribed by their physicians. The essays “How to Create an Addiction” and “Erin Daly: OxyWatchdog” by Cynthia Andrzejczyk explore the problem of prescription drugs in the United States. Since 1999, prescription drug epidemic in the United States has been killing 15,000 people every year from overdosing (Andrzejczyk 275). People have been losing their loved ones due to a culprit meant to help. The Pharma Purdue company who created the Oxycontin was responsible for starting the

The problem with opioids as a sole source of relief is that not only are they physically and psychologically addictive, but the user also begins to build a tolerance to the therapeutic effects. Eventually one requires higher doses in order to achieve the initial levels of pain relief. As the dose increases, so does the level of dependency and addiction. If a doctor refuses to increase the dose for the patient’s safety, the pain returns and patient may begin to feel the effects of opiate withdrawal. In worst-case scenarios people begin to abuse alcohol or seek out prescription pain medication illegally. Illicit and less expensive street drugs are often sought out if the afflicted can no longer afford their medications or cannot find a source of pain and addiction relief anywhere else. Purchase of street drugs becomes common when addiction begins to affect someone’s ability to keep a steady source of income. As a result, there has been a surge of opioid, heroin, and alcohol abuse and eventual overdose. (Dart, et al., 2015)

The figure is startling: A 96.6 percent increase in drug-related deaths in a five-year period (Hanson, 2010). According to Brown University Pharmacology Update (2009), since the period of increases in opioid misuse in the 1990s, data over the last three-to-four years indicate a high, steady prevalence of opioid prescription misuse in the United States. According to the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, about 5.2 million people ages 12 and older were current nonmedical users of prescription pain relievers in 2006, comprising 2.1% of the population. This rate has remained statistically unchanged since 2002. Survey data from 2002 to 2005 found that 4.8% of persons ages 12 and older (11.4 million people) used a prescription pain reliever nonmedically in the 12 months prior to the survey. This data also indicated that an annual average of 57.7% of people who used prescription pain medication nonmedically in the past year used hydrocodone products, and 21.7% used oxycodone products. Recent male users were more likely to use hydrocodone products nonmedically compared to recent female users (61.4% compared to 54.9%). Young

Prescription drug abuse is a modern-day disease. In an estimate, over six million American have abused prescription medication. However, there is no completely accurate way to measure this abuse. The number of people who have died is important, but the fact that many people suffer from addiction to prescription drugs is. Negative effects such as torn apart families, destroyed lives, and deaths are all results of Opioid overdoses. The question is why do people take opioids and what are they? According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse “Opioid are drugs formulated to replicate the pain reducing properties of opium. They include both painkillers such as morphine, oxycodone, or hydrocodone prescribed by doctors for chronic pain, as well

While most people take their medications (even the highly addictive ones) in the manner the physician intended, there are a subset of people who abuse prescribed prescription drugs. Dr. Angela Coulter, a senior research scientist from the University of Oxford said: “One in five people now take five medicines a day. It’s quite easy to start taking pills but stopping is more tricky”. The abuse of prescription drugs is on the rise leaving patients who struggle with chronic pain and doctors who treat them unsure what to do. Thanks to the side effects these drugs offer, such as extreme happiness and emotional calm, prescription painkillers are quickly becoming some of the most abused drugs in the United States.

As the crisis began to ramp up, sales of OxyContin, Perdue’s primary opioid painkiller, grew from $48 million in 1996 to $1.1 billion in 2000 (Van Zee 222). They achieved this goal by systematically misrepresenting the addictiveness of their products, telling doctors that there was virtually no potential for abuse. Though this was true for the treatment of acute pain, when used for longer periods of time for chronic pain, as they were being marketed and subsequently prescribed, they proved to be highly addictive. These prescription drugs are highly addictive and often drive addicts to move to more potent, less expensive street heroin when their prescriptions run out. One survey conducted among people undergoing treatment for heroin in 2014 found that 94% of patients started with prescription painkillers

Medications that fall into the opioid class include: oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet), hydrocodone (Vicodin), codeine, and morphine. Opioid prescription drug abuse is not a new problem, however it is progressively getting worse and something needs to be done about it. The director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse website, Nora D. Volkow, explains that “unintentional overdose deaths involving opioid pain relievers have quadrupled since 1999, and by 2007, outnumbered those involving heroin and cocaine” (Volkow). That is insane! Not only are drug overdoses revolving opioid narcotics rapidly increasing, but they are outnumbering overdoses from drugs that are illegal. The use of these drugs is an ongoing problem because opioid narcotics inhibit the body’s ability to produce essential naturally occurring chemicals, which then convinces the body that it needs to rely on the use of these drugs. This makes it very easy for one to become addicted and or dependent, especially if the person already has addictive genes in their family history, which is not uncommon. Prescription opioid drugs are serious, and many people often take them irresponsibly. Nora also says in her article, “…an estimated 52 million people have used prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons at least once in their lifetimes” (Volkow). She goes on to explain how young people represent a very strong potion of

Pain medications are drugs that are utilized to relieve the uneasiness associated with injury, disease, or surgery. There are different types of medications used to relieve pain because of the complexity of the pain process. These various kinds of medications for relieving pain work through varying psychological mechanisms. Generally, pain medications are classified into two major categories i.e. prescription and non-prescription drugs. Prescription drugs are extensive medications against pain and include more powerful drugs than the over-the-counter medications. These drugs are virtually used for any kind of pain situation though they are usually reserved for severe pain i.e. acute or chronic pain. In contrast, non-prescription drugs consists various mild anti-inflammatory medications that are mainly used for short-term pain and minor strains. Therefore, non-prescription drugs are used for common pains and aches and lower fever (Morelli & Vogin, n.d.). Some of the most common types of drugs used to relieve pain include nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, opioids, muscle relaxants, corticosteroids, antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, acetaminophen, and anticonvulsant drugs.

It’s a societal norm to seek out a physician when you are in pain, and society’s expectation is that the physician will do something about it. Sadly there will always be those who abuse the systems in place. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2011, found that approximately 52 million people have used prescription drugs for non medical reasons. Statistics show that roughly 80% of heroin addicts initially misused prescription opiods (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2015). There is always potential that taking prescription opiods can lead to patient abuse. “Unintentional overdose deaths involving opioid pain relievers have quadrupled since 1999” (U.S Department of Health and Human Services, 2011).

In the United States alone, over fifteen million people abuse prescription drugs. Due to the rise in prescription drug abuse, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have declared the abuse as a crisis. A common misconception about prescription drugs is that many people believe that they are safer than illegal drugs, such as heroin. However, prescription drugs are only safe in the doses prescribed. If taken obsessively, then the drugs have the potential to be just as dangerous as illegal substances. The most commonly abused prescription drugs are opiates, better known as painkillers, which have been readily available to abusers and requires little effort to attain. More needs to be done to limit prescriptions

The opiate epidemic is claiming more lives than car crashes, a crisis that is tearing families apart and is killing thousands of Americans. At the root of the opiate epidemic stands the pharmaceutical companies and prescribing physicians. A trend seen that too often begins with a patient being prescribed painkillers by a doctor, often for an injury, chronic pain or something as minor as oral surgery or a tooth ache. Many patients are unaware of the significant dangers of being prescribed these medications and ultimately become addicted. Physicians are not educating their patients to the risks associated with prescribing these medications; but more importantly

With the advances in medicine made within the last century, we can treat pain at various levels better than ever before. Whether it’s minor pain such as a headache, or more severe pain from injury or post-surgery, narcotic pain medication has been beneficial for relieving the feeling of pain in people a host of ailments. It can help many people go through day-by-day life better than they might have otherwise without the medication. Despite the benefits of relieving pain that various narcotic pain medications can have, there are also some drawbacks. The narcotics can also have addictive qualities which can lead to problems that can result in turning a person into an addict; and could also lead to overdosing or death. Are doctors over-prescribing

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.