Substance Abuse: Article Analysis

Most people are familiar with prescription medications; almost everyone has taken them at one point or another during their lifetime. Not all prescription drugs are addicting, but a large number of them are. Prescription drug abuse is a disease that has become a major problem in the United States, which affects over six-million Americans. Prescription drug abuse not only affects the individual, but can additionally have far-reaching consequences that affect family, personal health, employment, communities and society as a whole. Research has shown that at least 10% of people prescribed an addictive medication will become dependent on the medicine. Due to prescription drug abuse, states are beginning to monitor doctors who prescribe certain medications, more closely, which may scare some physicians away from prescribing helpful medications to people who truly need them.

Some of the most notable factors include that physicians often work for private entities that have little or no drug testing policies and many states do not have a confidential reporting system. Many healthcare workers feel intimidated about reporting such behavior and often "turn the other cheek". Physicians often enjoy an elevated social status, however being labeled as having an addiction problem diminishes that status and attaches a negative stigma to their once admirable life. In a Medscape survey 43% of physicians opposed the idea of mandatory testing, 39% were in support of the idea and 18% were impartial. The close percentages indicate that practicing physicians know that there is a growing problem with addiction and

Through my observations of the Narcotics Anonymous meeting I believe that my analysis could be beneficial to the realm of medicine. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014) released a study that displayed, “health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers in 2012, enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills.” Considering the mass amount of prescriptions being written nationwide, it is not surprising that one of the members in the NA meeting I attended was able to easily obtain painkillers from her doctor. The specific interaction I encountered during the Narcotics Anonymous meeting where the woman described that her addiction was being supported by the constant prescriptions written by her doctor

There have been people who do not consider prescription drugs to be dangerous. In, The Ongoing Opioid Prescription Epidemic: Historical Context, it tells that Kathleen Foley at Memorial-Sloan Cancer Center published two highly influential articles reporting addiction to be rare among inpatients (Meldrum, 2016). The implied message is that there is no risk. This may be possible in some instances because, no two people are the same. The appeal being used is that long-term opioids were potentially safe, because patients could be trusted to manage their

Meltzer, E., Suppes, A., Burns, S., Shuman, A., Orfanos, A., Sturiano, C., . . . Fins, J. (2013). Stigmatization of substance use disorders among internal medicine residents. Substance Abuse, 34(4), 356-362. https://doi.org/10.1080/08897077.2013.815143

According to the Department of Health and Human services, over 650,000 opioid prescriptions are dispensed in one day. This translates to around 230 million prescriptions each year. This amount just barely falls short of being high enough to give every adult in the United States their own bottle of opioid pills. The loose prescribing habits of medical professionals are to blame for these absurdly high numbers. Current doctors will prescribe an opiate-based painkiller for anything from a backache, toothache, to even headaches. To give patients “highly addictive” drugs for low scale chronic pain over the three-days recommended max incurs high risk for tolerance, dependence, and potential addiction to opioids. Some would argue that doctors are simply doing their job by solving their patient’s pain problem and that people should not intrude upon a medical professional’s expertise. However, while doctors should be unbiased pillars of medical advice and treatment, they should also take into account the risks involved with their treatment for their patient’s sake. Particularly for opioid prescriptions, doctors should have to abide by dosing criteria, receive guidance on when to seek consultation, and know how to use their state’s prescription drug monitoring program (Alexander et al., 2015). According to Alexander et al., (2015) Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) are underutilized by 81% of all prescribers.

In Lisa Rapoport’s article, “Doctors see regular misuse of antibiotics, narcotics,” she claims that 27 percent of doctors recognize the common misuse of treatments such as antibiotics (1). In addition, the rate of opioid misuse and the addiction rate have increased, therefore, doctors should help find alternative options instead of prescribing opioid painkillers. Doctors can also prescribe another painkiller medication in order to counter attack the addiction of having to take opioid medications. They should also be re-educated on how these drugs should prescribed and to be shown statistics to prove that there was an increase in opioid abusers. Another way doctors could decrease the use of opioid abuse, is prescribing low doses at first and then determining if this drug would be acceptable for the patient to use. People that are using these prescription drugs deal with issues regarding a disease or psychological disorder. However, data has shown how most doctors prescribe these drugs for the main purpose to handle chronic pain (“Data on” para 1). Some patients may even be just a victim of these drugs because they were unaware of the risks and side effects that can occur while taking this

In 2015 more than 33,000 people were killed due to the current opioid epidemic. This was the first time in history where heroin deaths exceeded deaths caused by gun violence. Some may ask why opioid addiction is so common and that is because most doctors, dentists, and surgeons prescribe opioids as if it's candy, post surgery. Most of these professionals don't take into consideration that such medication can cause addiction after multiple uses. A reason for that can be is prescribing such pills can benefit the doctor financially just as much as the patient psychically. Many pharmaceutical companies hand out a lot of freebies such as free sample medication, free food, free pens and office equipment to doctors in order to bride them over. In addition, many of these physicians over look patient's history's, and some cases like smoking many of these positions may even overload patient history that may show any prior drug abuse issues within their family history or personal use. This may even show if the patient

A psychiatrist in a methadone clinic in Northeast Washington, D.C. works with patients who are addicted to drugs. Some of her patients suffering from addiction

I can’t count the number of prescriptions I get from the same doctor for the same medication same quantity on a daily basis. I feel that some doctors are simply writing scripts to make the patient happy when in reality their feeding the addiction. I have seen patients jump form pharmacy to pharmacy in order to fill multiple scripts for the same medication on the same day. There is a system that collects and keeps track of the what types of controlled and narcotic medications people received, however the system takes days to update, so it almost impossible to know right away when the last time a patient received a particular opioid medication. Another issue that I believe is feeding the addiction for drugs abusers is the sale of needles. Depending on the state, people who do not have a prescription for needles or a medication that requires the use of needles, can simply walk into a pharmacy and buy a box of needles. Anyone with commons sense would see that if you don’t have a prescription that requires needles your most likely using it for illegal reasons. Pharmacy regulations make it to easy for people to get what they need in order to “get

Studies show that in the last 15 years the rate of opioid overdose deaths has paralleled the rate at which opioid prescriptions are given. Each year the number of deaths attributed to opioid overdose has increased, reaching 47,055 in 2014 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Still other statistics state that 4 out of 5 heroin users started on prescribed narcotics. When they could no longer obtain the drug legally, they turned to illegal means. Doctors at the American Medical Association, Hallam M. Gugelmann and Jeanmarie Perrone, state that “Individual use of prescription opioids increased 402% from 1997 to 2007. This increase in opioid prescribing parallels substantial increases in opioid addiction, fatal overdoses, and diversion of these drugs for recreational or nonmedical use.” The skyrocketing of overdose and death, as well as the millions of dollars expended for treatment has lead to a public outcry for change. Accomplishing this change seems daunting. How will America go about fixing such a pervasive problem? Logically, the only solution lies in changing the habits of the medical practitioners who are prescribing these medications and who started this

The medical system is made by doctors, by people practicing medicine. It is not a social system; it is a system based on doctors and according to what doctors believe is the right way to take care of the patients. The bottom-line was that patients should not be judged, patients were seeking help, and the system should give them that help. So, they should not be judged for their drug addiction or their behavior. They instituted the system to help people, so when someone seeking for assistance comes to my father, he tells them, "I can help you in this, and this, and this. Although I cannot help you in that, I will do my best to catch you up with your situation." The system is all based on interdisciplinary collaboration between professionals

The second scenario, during these 6 week of reading at the end of every story, page, and chapter a person with substance abuse felt alone, confuse, and lost, until they decided to reach out for help or depend on something other than themselves. While making the comparison a lot of individual experience loneliness, temptation, loss their way or direction, hunted by fear and emotional turmoil daily even without having a substance abuse or in the wild. In this sense counselors uses techniques, guidance, spirituality to prepare the individuals to find their own way since every one practice may be different than others an there are non-believers. Therefore, coping respectfully in my eye’s is preparing them for the up and down they may encounter

There are many assessment processes that are used to identify substance abuse as well as many other disorders that are addictive. These processes include the SBIRT, AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test), NIDAMED, CAGE AID (which is used frequently within the counseling foundation), AUDIT-C, and also the DAST-10 which is an assessment process used to evaluate drug abuse within the patients. These are many different processes that are currently used to identify these addictions in clients. The activity of identifying these processes can be over a period of time or can be evaluated in that same day or after the evaluation is completed.

Substance abuse disorders are common in our society. It is a disorder that each one of us will most likely experience through a family member, friend, or our self. I felt very drawn to this topic due to the fact that I have a family that has background of substance abuse and I myself have battle the demon. Not until I struggled with my own addiction did I become more tolerable and understanding to those that have a substance abuse disorder. Substance abuse is not something anyone wants to have; it is a disorder that takes control of a person’s life. It is a beast that tears a person apart; from their being to the lives of their loved ones. This disorder is not biased in anyway; rich or poor, male or female, employed or unemployed, young or