No one wants to become addicted to any prescription drugs that help to alleviate pain. Growing distant to the ones you love, underperforming in your job, and becoming a small-time criminal aren’t the desires of anyone when they swallow their first Vicodin.
One in five Americans is reported to have misused some painkiller at some point in their lifetime, but the vast majority swallow the pills with no long term damage. So how does prescription painkiller abuse progress to opioid dependence?
For people with a genetic weakness to opioid dependence, swallowing pain pills can lead to high that makes the brain crave further excitement of the same level. Repetition of the high strengthens the slippery slope, and sets the scene for full on drug dependence.
Why is there an increasing problem with pain preventing drugs
Experts are not entirely sure how many people are dependent on prescription drugs at this time, but most acquiesce that it is increasing. In answer to patients and pain advocacy groups, doctors may have become less restrictive in prescribing opioid pain pills. There has been a mass increase in prescriptions for opioid over the past few years — and the birth of millions of potential drug stashes in medicine cabinets across the country.
Drug abuses amongst teenagers using opioids are now second only to weed in popularity. Almost one in 10 high school seniors report taking Vicodin within the past year. Not by coincidence, most of their parents are ones who take the drug too: Vicodin and its generic form was the most-prescribed drug of any kind for much of this decade.
To begin to understand why, you need to look deep inside the brain and really address the root of the problem.
Sex, Drugs, and the Opioid-Addicted Brain
Opioids, like all commonly abused drugs, stimulate the areas of the brain that perceive pleasure. This results in the euphoria or sense of well being that many opiates bring about. But they also help us to feel what is important in the mind.
Finding and eating food, drinking water, having sex, caring for children: these and other activities necessary to survival cause the reward system to release a tiny dose of dopamine, a neurotransmitter.
Repeat abuse of opioid drugs overflows the system with dopamine, which helps the euphoric rush of the prescription drug.
As an addiction-susceptible person uses opioids time and again, the reward system begins to inadvertently learn these drugs are as essential to survival as food or water.
This explains the changes in behaviour that go along with opioid addiction: neglecting responsibilities to loved ones, poor work performance, or loss of libido.
Opioid Addiction: Hard to Predict
Everyone’s brain has a reward system. What determines who becomes addicted, and who doesn’t?
People may experience pain pills like most people do alcohol. It’s something pleasurable in moderation, but they have no urge to over indulge.
Childhood trauma, like physical or sexual abuse, loss of a parent at a young age, or witnessing violent acts create changes in the brain that last into adulthood.
So we now know more about the problem, let’s be on the lookout to help and not judge those who fall victim!