Prescription Drug Abuse: A Case Study

The medications that are being used include anti-consultants, stimulants, anti-depressants, and mood stabilizers. These medications can overused or misused due to finding what works for each child. Here lies a huge ethical dilemma that is very personal to me.

Prescribed drugs are usually potent. The common medications that patients normally abused are opioids, stimulants and CNS depressants. Abusing these drugs can be as dangerous as using illicit drugs. Many varieties of therapeutic interventions include community prevention programs that combine two or more effective programs can be more effective than a single program. An intervention requires strategy and a plan of action in order to be successful and it is individualized to each patient situation. Programs directed to treat drug addictions should address all forms of drug abuse, especially the causes of abusing prescribed drugs, the type of drug abuse problem in the community and inappropriate use. Early detection can enable treatment and reduce the debility and co-morbidity that can associate with the disorder. A prevention strategy that can be used by individuals is locking medication in a secured place so that prescribed drugs are kept safe from unwanted hands. Another way is an appropriate disposing medication safely. Families can be familiarized themselves with the warning signs, such as missing prescription script and frequent borrowing of money from friends and

Drug abuse in America is at an all time high across the country. Most people start out with a legit medical issue that leads to a prescription for pain, anxiety, stress, or even trouble concentrating. After repeated prescriptions, the body tends to get use to the medicine, with then leaves the body craving more. In fact, prescription drug abuse is the highest drugs abused my both men and women. Research shows that young adults ages 18 to 25 are the prime abusers of prescription drugs, ADHD drugs as well as anti-anxiety drugs. There several reason why this age group abuse these types of drugs. The reasons include getting high, to feel good, better study habits, stress, and weight loss.

Prescription drug use has been rising in the past decade steadily. There are no signs of it slowing down either. In 1999-2000 people who have taken one prescription drug rose from 43.5% to 48.3%. The use of two or more prescription drugs rose from 25.4% to 31.2%. Also the use of five or more prescription drugs has risen from 6.3% to 10.7%.

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

The illicit use of prescription stimulants, such as Adderall and Ritalin, by college students has been very well documented over the past years (Babcock Q & Byrne T, 2000). Although data is somewhat limited in variety and lacking concentration on specific populations, this substance abuse concern has been studied for well over a decade (Teter, 2006). A prevalence of more than 10% of college students, within the United States, self-report misusing prescription stimulants; it is apparent that these levels are the highest they have been in over the past decades (Kilmer at al, 2015). The United States has been suffering from a devastating prescription drug abuse epidemic, as declared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Given the staggering numbers of not only prescribing practices of prescription painkillers and other such medications, increases of prescription stimulant medications follow the recurrent trends of excessive prescribing. An accumulative number of Adderall, and similar prescription stimulant medications, used to treat Attention Deficient-Hyperactivity

Pt. was admitted to the AMS of DE program suffering from opiate addiction with two previous outpatient treatment services. Pt. reported that he started using heroin in 2000 on a daily basis by route of IV and he last used in 2008. Pt. reported a substance abuse hx of alcohol x 33 years, opiates x 8 years, benzos x 20 years, cocaine x 21 years, nicotine x 23 years. PCP x 21 years and cannabis x 23 years. At the time of his discharge, Pt. lost his job and he was living with his

“Prescription drug abuse is the use of a medication without a prescription, in a way other than as prescribed, or for the experience or feelings elicited.” Prescription Drugs are ranked number two in drugs abused (Volkow 7).

College students diagnosed with ADHD are popular kids around any given campus. Most college students looking to score some Adderall usually obtain it through a friend or an acquaintance. Pills can range anywhere from 3 to 30 dollars a pill. Using Adderall is seen as a way to get an upper hand when it comes to academics. Students will pop a pill to study, take a test, and even for fun. In an age where procrastination is common, students will do anything to cut their learning curve of classroom curriculum and make up for poor time management. Students report that when taking prescription stimulants they feel an increase in alertness and concentration. Students also report weight loss as a (sometimes desired) side effect. In the article “Got Any Smart Pills?” authors Harry Jaffe and Alex Chip tell the story of a college student at Duke University named Kirk. Kirk was an average student who worked hard to get into Duke’s pre-medical program, but once he got there he found it hard to compete with the other students. Coupled with the party scene at the school, it’s no wonder his grades were sub-par. One day his frat brother picked up on his distress and offered him Adderall. Kirk had never popped a pill for academic or recreational purposes, but after taking the drug and cramming 14 hours straight for a test with positive results, he made it a staple in his academic routine. His abuse slowly progressed as the semester went on. During finals week he took a total 200mg of

“In a 2002 study by the University of Wisconsin at Madison, one out of five students there acknowledged having taken attention-deficit drugs without a prescription. “Last year the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found in an annual survey of drug use that 1.8 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 25, or 6 percent of those surveyed, admitted having taken Ritalin -- an older stimulant used to treat attention-deficit disorder -- without a prescription.”(“The Other Performance-Enhancing Drugs.”). Students take the drugs to help them focus on a task or relive stress. The only problem with taking the drugs is you become addicted to it like any good drug. Student soon become addicted to the medicine from taking only a couple of pills. “That was the case for Becky, a junior at College Park who asked that her last name not be published. “She first tried Adderall last year while studying for a philosophy exam. She bought a 30-milligram pill -- the highest dose available -- through a friend for $5. "I just felt like I had a constant flow of energy, she recalls” (“The Other Performance-Enhancing Drugs.”). She claims she did not minor much feel the side effects, which included dehydration and the jitters. After all, she got an A on her exam. After a year of getting Adderall from friends, she talked to her mother about obtaining a regular supply. This fall her mother called Becky's doctor, who prescribed Adderall without seeing her. "I'm assuming my mom just explained that concentration has been a problem for me for a long time," says Becky, who now takes the drug multiple times a week “I don't know that I was officially diagnosed with anything.” (“The Other Performance-Enhancing Drugs.”). Many of the students who have been prescribed the ADHD medicine feel like people judge them as junkies if the find out they take the drug. Pressured by friends to

Like the general population, the nursing profession is also plagued by the growing problem of prescription drug abuse. The stressful work environment, the ease of access to prescription drugs and perhaps a lack of training or education adds fuel to the problem of addiction. According to the American Nursing Association about 10% of the nursing workforce may be dependent on drugs or alcohol (Starr, 2015). There are roughly 4,148,730 active nursing professionals in the United States (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2017). This means that around 414, 873 of nurses suffer from the aforementioned addiction issues. Since nurses are at the forefront of health care, it follows that any form of abuse causes a significant problem in the quality patient care delivery.

Prescription drug abuse is steadily on the rise; there is an epidemic particularly of prescription opioid addiction and abuse in the United States. In 2013 prescription opioids surpassed automobile collisions for the number one cause of injury-related deaths in America, among individuals aged 25-64 (Lypapustina, 2016). Many patients’ addiction started with experimental use of the drug in a social situation (Felicinda-Reynaldo, 2014). However, another influential factor that should be considered, is that doctors are treating pain differently than they have in the past decade or so. For many years the basic vital signs were blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and temperature. The process of improved pain recognition started in 1992, and pain

Schwarz (2013), shares that Adderall, a prescription given to people with ADHD, is a stimulant that is widely used among college students to have an increased concentration and energy for multiple hours. Fee, who according to his parents, was had never showed any signs of ADHD as a child or anytime before his college years. Fee’s parents were surprised that his son was diagnosed with ADHD and given Adderall to help with ADHD effects. Fee was actually an intelligent college student who used his intellect to fake ADHD symptoms in order to be prescribed Adderall to improve his studies. Very quickly, Fee became addicted to the Adderall and found that it was almost effortless to continue to get prescription for the drug. According to Schwarz (2009), Fee was initially diagnosed with an ADHD without hyperactivity and was given medication (Vyvanese) to treat the disorder. Shortly after Fee was prescribed Adderall where his addiction was formed by the increasing dosage and failure of physicians detecting any type of addiction problem. While Fee’s parents tried to intervene to stop physicians from continuing to prescribe Adderall to their son, physicians were not helpful. One doctor even went ahead and gave Fee two future dated prescriptions without checking the online database that informs doctors of a patient’s one-year prescription history. Fee’s addiction to Adderall ultimately lead to him to his death. Fee hung himself in his closet and was found by his

These drugs are generally prescribed when a person is diagnosed with a mental illness such as Schizophrenia, Depression, or Attention Deficit Disorder. The sudden rise in number of mental illness diagnoses has led to a rapid increase in the number of prescriptions recommended to patients. Sadly, many of these patients are children who are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Depression. According to Erica Goode, studies indicate that “pediatricians and child psychiatrists”, are frequently leaning towards the use of psychotropic medication as the “treatment of choice” for an assortment of mental illnesses and disorders (Goode, “Study Finds Jump in Children Taking Psychiatric Drugs”). This acknowledgement solidifies the unsettling norm of children taking prescription drugs daily in an effort to mask their behaviors. Instead of using numerous methods of teaching and parenting to counteract unpleasant or hyperactive behavior, professionals have now employed a different approach by using “medicalization” to treat “emotional and behavioral problems” (Mcleod et. al, 54). The problem with this approach is that the behavior is never actually addressed. Instead it’s medicated causing children to become zombies or robots rather than living, breathing, human beings, with genuine thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Out of all the doctors I saw, there’s only one I will never forget. For three years he continued to feed my amphetamine addiction, Adderall. I hate him for that. As an addict, I played the “I don’t notice any difference in my attention span” card and it actually worked. He was being paid three-hundred dollars an hour to support my addiction. It was all about money to him. “Will you be paying cash or credit card?” If he had cared about me as a patient, he would have realized that prescribing me excessive amounts of Adderall was only going to set me up for failure. After three years of being prescribed four times the average amount, I got smart, and it ruined my life. It all started in my senior year of high school. Everybody I hung out with was either smoking pot or cigarettes. Not me, I was snorting Adderall daily, and smoking cigarettes like a chimney. People started to figure out why I was so skinny, ninety-six pounds and five-foot-five-inches tall. My secret was out, and here was the perfect chance to see who liked to do what I did in the bathroom every day. By the end of week one, I had three people to sell whatever was left of my Adderall prescription. Within a month, I was making over one-thousand dollars a month. I was a naïve seventeen-year-old girl, who got money hungry. The psychiatrist I was seeing was making so much money just by supplying my bad habit, and I figured why not make the money he took from my family back by selling what he was prescribing me. It