Prescription Drug Addiction Research

Brain chemistry can affect different addicts more then others. Drugs and alcohol are more of the main addictions that brain chemistry affects. Once taking these addictive substances your internal natural drug dopamine is lowers causing you to seek more external addictive substances. This causes craving and makes it a lot harder for the addict to stop. In Olds and Milner’s later experiments, they allowed the rats to press a particular lever to arouse themselves, to the effect that they would press it as much as seven-hundred times per hour. This region soon came to be known as the "pleasure center". Using drugs and alcohol stimulates the pleasure center in the brain that makes your brain think, “feels good- want more“. This can make it increasingly harder for an addict to stop using, until they hit a point called “rock bottom”. This is where choice comes back into play.

As we all have researched and found out the devastating numbers to the opioid epidemic “the abuse of prescription and non-prescription opioids is one of the greatest threats facing public health in the United States today. It is estimated that as many as 2.5 million people in the US are suffering from opioid addiction related to prescriptions, and an additional 467,000 are addicted to heroin”(2017).

When people picture a drug addict, many individuals may see the same picture of a dirty, disgusting, maybe even homeless, individual that has no place in this world. While addicts like this do exist, the wide spread of the current opiate addiction crisis has completely changed the worlds perception. The word opiate is a wide spread term for a group of narcotics that cause sedation, respiratory failure, and if used excessively, can result in death. However, their high potential for addiction has resulted in what some parts of the world have declared as a public health crisis. With the over-prescribing of painkillers and the increased availability and lowered price of heroin on the streets, opiate addictions and overdoses have increased dramatically;

For the past five years, death from drug overdose has ranked as the leading cause of preventable death in the United States (Vashishtha, Mittal, & Werb, 2017). Currently, about two-thirds of these drug overdose deaths involve opioids, in many cases, prescription opioids (Rudd, Seth, David, & Scholl, 2016). Recent estimates suggest that more than two and one-half million Americans have severe opioid misuse disorder, and many of these individuals are misusing prescription opioids that were once prescribed to them for an indicated condition (Vashishta et al., 2017). Many different factors have contributed to the growth of the opioid epidemic. Some

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) (2016), substance abuse refers to “the harmful or hazardous use of psychoactive substances, including alcohol and illicit drugs.” The term substance abuse may congregate images of drugs, such as cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco. However, the current drug afflicting the United States are opioids. Opioids are a category of illegal drugs, which includes heroin and opium, and can be found in pain medications (National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIH], 2014). Since 2000, opioid abuse has increased 200% with more than 47,055 deaths from drug overdose in 2014 (Rudd, Aleshire, Zebell, & Gladden, 2016). Therefore, many of the national bills being introduced this legislation pertain to opioid abuse. Meanwhile

Drug addiction has always been a major concern in the United States. According to a survey conducted by National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) in 2013, 24.6 million Americans aged 12 or older had used an illegal drug including Marijuana, Prescription Drugs, cocaine, Hallucinogens, Inhalants and Heroin in the past month, that is the almost ten percent of the population. Given that this number is 8.3 percent in 2002, it indicates that illegal drug use in the United States has been increasing rapidly over the past decade. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), in 2010, nearly 40,000 people died of drug overdoses, greater than the total deaths of motor vehicle accidents, homicides and suicides. Drugs cost the nation more

Many people do not understand why individuals become addicted to drugs. The truth is drugs change the brain and cause repeated drug abuse. Drug addiction is a brain disease. Drug use leads to changes in the function and structure of the brain. Although it is true that for most people the initial decision to take drugs is voluntary, over time, the changes in the

Drug addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disorder which produces compulsive drug seeking and use. The abuse of drugs leads to changes in the function and structure of the brain. Consuming chemical substances to achieve pleasure or euphoria The most commonly abused classes of prescription drugs according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse include opioids used for chronic pain; central nervous system (CNS) depressants used in anxiety and sleep disorder treatments; and stimulants, such as amphetamine among others, utilized to treat attention deficit disorder and narcolepsy.[4]

Substance use disorders and addiction are affecting Americans at an alarming rate. People of all backgrounds, cultures and socioeconomic status have suffered the impact this epidemic is causing on loved ones, friends or maybe even themselves. Some individuals seek treatment and with the help of a support network they can change their life. Others are not so lucky. It is estimated that 62,497 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016. That is more casualties than the Vietnam War (Lopez, 2017). This number does not include deaths resulting from diseases of long term use such as liver cirrhosis, hepatitis and AIDS. It would be easy to conclude these addicted individuals died in vain simply due to their poor life choices and lack of morals, but

While the choice to use alcohol and drugs is initially voluntary, alcohol and/or drug addiction arises because the normal functioning of the brain is impaired so that alcoholism and drug addiction become a “chronic relapsing disease of the brain” (National Institute of Drug Abuse, Drugs, Brains and Behavior. The Science of Addiction. 2014, 5). Drugs impact the pathways of the brain by flooding the circuit with dopamine, which disturbs and distorts normal communication between the brain’s neurons. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter present in regions of the brain which regulates movement, emotion, motivation and feelings of pleasure. Over stimulating the system with drugs produces euphoric effects which strongly reinforce the behavior of drug use teaching the user to repeat drug use. Continuing alcohol and drug use despite the adverse consequences of such use results in abusers experiencing some or all of the following symptoms: mental stress, impulsive behavior, anger, disorganized thinking, poor coping skills, inadequate decision making and inflexible cognitive response patterns.

As text and research explains, the decision to abruptly stop the usage of a controlled substance can elicit the natural, bodily response which is nothing short of extreme shock to the system. This flight or fight response typically elevates the heart rate, raises blood pressure, surges stress levels and employ additional chaotic issues of concern. Many, like me in the past, may find it difficult to comprehend why professionals tend to recruit the help of prescription medications to treat an individual addicted to a substance. However, further ponderous of thought can help formulate the understanding as to how this method can help addiction, such as with each of the three cases (i.e. Constantine, Joey and Angela) presented in this week’s literature

Unbeknownst to the everyday individual, there is a raging issue going on within our nation that involves the rising surge of narcotic misuse and overdose. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from 1999 to 2014, more than 165,000 people have died in the United States from overdoses related to prescription opioids. In 2014, almost 2 billion people either abused or overdosed on prescription opioids, and of which 14,000 were fatal. Today, the heartbreaking statistics indicate to us that at least half of all overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid. (CDC, 2016) Thus, this information leads us all to wonder where these addictions are sparked and where the prescriptions are being administered. One extremely popular route, involves our Emergency Departments (ED) all across the nation. For the remainder of this paper, we will discuss the clinical portion of this issue, and the interventions that all medical professionals can put into place to help lower the numbers of these statistics.

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.

One myth about addict users is that addicts can stop if they really want to. Research shows that brain chemistry is effected when substance use is used for a long period of time (White, n.d.). Because of the changes in brain chemistry, craving occur along with impulse control and this leads to addiction (White,

Many people in the world have abused drugs at least once in their lifetime and some of those people abuse it every day. Lots of drug abuse often turns into a drug addiction which is much more serious and can even be deadly.Many people do not understand that people who have drug addictions choose to continue their behaviors or that they lack the will to quit. Many people just assume that a person with a drug addiction could just quit anytime they wanted to but that is not the case. Because of the ways that drugs change the brain quitting is extremely hard, even if a person wants to quit. Although the decision to take drugs for the first time is a personal choice, eventually the brain changes to reduce self control and their