Effects of Prescription Pain Reliever Addiction

When a person is addicted to prescription pain relievers, each day becomes an exercise in making sure there are enough pills to get through the day. If there aren’t, then he or she has to figure out how to get them. What must not happen is that withdrawal sickness and pain must not kick in. For that to be avoided, there must be hydrocodone, oxycodone, morphine or other prescription opiates on hand. If that fails, there must be heroin.

There are different ways to get the pills. One is doctor-shopping, going from one doctor to the next to get enough prescriptions to last. This can be difficult when tolerance increases and more pills are needed just to maintain normalcy. It there is an unscrupulous doctor on hand, it might not be so hard. But as one state after another implements prescription tracking systems or as law are changed that make indiscriminate prescribing impossible, the noose tightens around the neck of the addicted person.

There’s always traveling across state lines if it gets too hot in your state. And some drug dealers traffic in prescription drugs as well as marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. Maybe some friends have some pills to sell. For a long time, one could forge prescriptions but doctors’ offices have become far more protective of their prescription pads.

This becomes the consuming activity of the opiate pain reliever addict. Some will go into methadone programs and stay there for years. The methadone will get them out of this squirrel cage of always needing more pills but they will find when they finally try to get off the methadone that it is a longer, more difficult withdrawal than from either prescription opiates or heroin.

Other people may sign up for Suboxone programs and use this enrollment to escape this trap of always needing the day’s dose. Some people in these programs sell the Suboxone they get, just keeping enough to prevent withdrawal symptoms in themselves if they can’t find their dose for the day. Then they can go ahead and abuse other opioids.

This is just one aspect of the effect of prescription pain reliever addiction - what it does to one’s focus in life.

Other Serious Effects on the Addicted Person’s LIfe

One of the most obvious problems that can occur in the life of a person abusing prescription pain relievers is an overdose. In 2009, more than 340,000 people went to the emergency room for problems with prescription pain reliever abuse. This number was more than double the number of five years before. Opiates slow respiration and if too much is taken, the person can simply stop breathing. This is even more likely if the person combines opiates with alcohol or benzodiazepines.

By 2010, there were more people dying from prescription painkillers than those dying from cocaine and heroin combined. In 2008, nearly 15,000 people in the US alone died from prescription painkiller overdoses. This number tripled in one decade.

Those struggling with addiction to prescription pain relievers will experience a deterioration in their social interactions with family and friends. Things that were important to them before now take a back seat to the maintenance of the drug habit. A person will normally neglect their personal care and health. Legal and financial situations will mount. If the family bails the person out of their problems, then they may not wind up living on the street.

Narconon Offers the Solution to Lasting Sobriety

In dozens of Narconon rehabilitation centers around the world, people who are addicted to both street and prescription opiates are finding recovery, right alongside those addicted to all those other street and medical drugs. The Narconon program uses maintenance drugs as part of its treatment and recovering addicts are able to find a new bright outlook and reduce cravings through the Narconon New Life Detoxification. This phase of recovery uses time in a sauna, a strict nutritional supplementation regimen, and daily exercise to enable the body to flush out old stored drug toxins. The lowered cravings reported by those who finish it are essential to a lasting, sober lifestyle.

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