Substance Abuse In Pharmacy

One in three Americans are prescribed opioids from their doctor. Once someone is prescribed a medication and take it daily, as told to do so by the doctor, it is extremely easy to become dependent on the pills. Dependency on a drug means that the body physically craves it and may experience withdrawals when the prescription is stopped. Addiction characterizes as a mental need for the drug. The behavior changes and abusing the medication will begin.

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

Millions of people throughout the world are taking drugs on a daily basis. If you were to ask someone why they take prescription drugs, most people would be taking them for the right reason. However, it’s estimated that twenty percent of people in the United States alone have used prescription drugs for non-medical reasons.1 Prescription drug abuse is a serious and growing problem that often goes unnoticed. Abusing these drugs can often lead to addiction and even death. You can develop an addiction to certain drugs that may include: narcotic painkillers, sedatives, tranquilizers, and stimulants.1 Prescription drugs are the most common abused category of drugs, right next to marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and

The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such.

It is important for our culture in western society to educate doctors on how to modify and limit their prescribing behavior so that less people become dependent on opioid medication. Doctors must start limiting and monitoring the number of opioid prescriptions they administer to patients. Limiting the number of prescriptions will lower the chances for potential abuse within patients, as well as lower the ease of access and circulation of opioid medication on the streets.

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

Painkillers are prescribed so fluently within doctors offices, hospitals, and other similar facilities. Part of the issue comes from our physicians and those patients who complain about their “pain.” Rarely do physicians say no to a begging patients, but also they rarely take the time to run the necessary test to find the root of the problem. As a beginning solution, educational classes on dealing with and treating chronic pain and how to properly dispose of unused pharmaceuticals like opioids are gaining popularity(Meldrum). With the proper knowledge, people can begin to understand how opioids become so addicting. Along with knowledge about the epidemic comes help for those affected. Treatment centers for those who need it should be implemented at a proper cost and with availability for everyone. Through the Affordable Care Act, treatment coverage has been broadened. This contributes to actual care for addicts rather than punitive measures. Along with treatment options, emotional support to an addict goes a long way. Addicts can return to a life full of bad choices when they feel as if no one cares to see them get better(Newcomer). With proper treatment and precautions, the epidemic can be solved.

As we see the further progression of the opioid epidemic within the United States, pharmacists become the frontlines to recognizing and providing care for these patients. It is however difficult to provide care for a patient when even the professionals within the medical community have an associated stigma attached to the use of these drugs. Patients who have a need for these painkillers recognize this stigma, and by doing so decide to avoid consulting their doctors and do not seek the care which they need. They do this to avoid the discriminatory treatment they receive both within and on the outside of the healthcare system, and to avoid the legal repercussions associated with the misuse and abuse of these products1. It is therefore the pharmacists' job to avoid the stigmatization of these people and respect those who use these treatments for legitimate medical purposes.

Doctors and clinical prescribers have discovered their role in curtailing the increased opioid prescriptions in America. It is without a doubt that they play a role in facilitating the opioid misuse endemic in the past by being enablers of the situations. When patients ask for pain medications, they do not take time to analyze the pain complaints or suggest alternative medications other than opioids. Even in instances when one doctor declines to offer a patient an opioid prescription for their pain needs, the patient is likely to find another who will give the prescription. However, there has been wide recognition of the opioid misuse endemic such that clinical prescribers are practicing more vigilant prescribing and are advocating opioid-free

These efforts are focusing little attention on the source of the medications themselves, the access point -- the medical practitioner with a pen. In the current environment, a doctor, dentist, or nurse practitioner can write a prescription to anyone without accountability for the aftermath. In March the CDC convened to put forth guidelines for prescribing opioid medications in cases of chronic pain (Dowell, Haegerich, & Chou, 2016, pp. 1633-1641). The published guideline is a passive 12 point recommendation for prescribing practices without accountability, solutions, or intention to enforce better practice. To date, the national response to the crisis can be described as impotent at best, and the body count rises. “Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., with 52,404 lethal drug overdoses in 2015. Opioid addiction is driving this epidemic, with 20,101 overdose deaths related to prescription pain relievers, and 12,990 overdose deaths related to heroin in 2015.” (ASAM,

In 2012, enough opioid prescriptions were written to cover every adult in America at least once , but that trend has already begun to be reversed. Last year, 17 million fewer opioid pain relievers were prescribed than in the year before. The concern is that the new guidelines and policies are blunt instruments that are denying patients who appropriately use their prescription opioids access to medications, rather then blocking access for the recreational, illicit user of opioids. There are reports of physicians who are wary about writing prescriptions for opioid pain relievers, those who blindly follow guidelines without considering the nuances of an individuals’ needs, and those who have

Opioid abuse, misuse and overdose is a problem in The United States. You can’t turn on the TV or read a newspaper without some mention of the epidemic. This issue has caused the practice of prescribing or taking narcotic pain medication to be looked at under a microscope. Patients are fearful to use some necessary pain medication, because they may become addicted. Other patients who genuinely do have pain and need medication are having a tougher time obtaining the help they need. The problem of abuse and addiction is tough to solve since for some people the medications are the only way they can function and live a semi-normal life. A patient with pain may be hesitant to visit the doctor and

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.

Getting involved with opioids now days seem fairly easy, our young ones are becoming addicted to these medications because our doctors don’t care. Doctors are just signing off prescriptions left and right. But in reality physicians have responsibilities, such as obtaining physical examination, a medical history, develop a written treatment plan for their patients, and comply with controlled substances laws and regulations. In a lot of cases doctors don’t want to deal with their patients so they will just prescribed medications to get people in and out of the office, to keep up with their hectic schedule, and don’t want to find the root of the cause, or maybe they just don’t have the time. Other ways to get opioids include within relatives, visits out of the country, pharmacy and hospital theft, and “stealing from grandma’s cabinet” (Inciardi, Surratt, Kurtz, and Cicero 2007). Despite the overload of opioids in our country almost 80% of the world 's population today has no access to morphine. And an estimated 33 million people, need specialized medical care but have no access to even basic care and symptom control. This terrible lack of pain relief can be attributed to our governments need to control and regulation.

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