We must acknowledge that small numbers of patients treated with opioids for long periods at high doses will develop dependence, displaying withdrawal symptoms and/or breakthrough pain when opioids are rapidly tapered. Much smaller numbers will develop full-fledged addiction, characterized by obsessive drug seeking behaviors. From multiple studies, we know that substance abuse disorder or chronic prescribing in post-surgical patients treated with opioids is uncommon (less than 0.6% for substance abuse, with up to 6%of post-surgical patients needing prolonged prescribing — due to emergence of chronic pain from failed surgeries, not because of substance abuse). Other studies fix the rate of overdose death from prescriptions at about 0.2% per year – comparable to mortality from blood thinners prescribed to prevent atrial fibrillation after stroke.
Try getting some from the VA these days.
The irony here is rich.
Many of those who now face restrictions on their addiction are those who have been strong advocates in the War on Drugs.
And anyone doing 10mg a day, or more, of opioids...every day...for months on end...IS AN ADDICT.
The issue is that people become addicted while taking prescription opiates, and turn to street drugs because they are so much cheaper and more potent. Statistics on deaths from overdose do not necessarily include data on how the addiction occurred.
I have a prescription for opiates right now, 2 mg tablets. They make me feel loopy. There are warnings in the use instruction about how they can cause addiction.
Nonsense.
I don’t know anyone who has been addicted to blood thinners but I know several who have died from heroin OD and they all started started on prescription Opioids.
There is a 60 Min piece (one of the very few good ones) who went to Amsterdam 10 years apart to talk to heroin addicts.
Every one of them from the first show were dead.
Prescription Opioids are pretty much the same formulation.
"medically managed opioids" are a source of street drugs. The two are linked, not separate.
Well, I’m sure an article from the “National Pain Report” has their own biases.
Their main argument seems to be that the amount of ODs strictly tied to prescribed drugs is small. However, I notice they ignore addressing how many of the people who eventually OD initially became addicted to opiates through prescription drugs.
Most everyone I have known who became addicted to the stuff did not start out buying heroin on the street.
Drug use to relieve pain is legitimate. Drug abuse is a CHOICE, and a bad one.