Heroin and prescription pain pills both come from the same chemical family of opioids. Besides heroin, prescription pain pills are abused even more and even more common. Part of this stems from the fact that these pain pills are almost prescribed like they are candy. In 2012, doctors wrote an astonishing 259 million prescriptions for pain pills such as Vicodin and Oxycontin. That's enough for every adult American to have at least one bottle of these powerful pills. And while it's easy to blame prescription-happy doctors, it's not necessarily their fault. When these prescription pain pills first came out, big pharma said there were no downfalls and they could be prescribed at will. These pills are prescribed for many reasons; from managing chronic pain, to sports injuries, to pain relievers for after surgeries. Like other drugs, the people using these pain pills build up tolerance and start requiring more and more to get the same effect, which in turn equals more money. And this is where prescription opiate abuse can lead to heroin abuse. Once it becomes too expensive to buy, for example, hydrocodone, people turn to the black market, where heroin is a cheaper alternative that can provide the same type of high. From the video, it is estimated that between 60 and 80 percent of heroin addicts started off with prescription opiates.
This is a problem that isn't going away anytime soon, with doctors still prescribing staggering amounts of prescription opiates. While doctors need educated on when prescription opiates should be used, patients need to be educated on the risks and benefits of these very powerful drugs, and hopefully, by reducing prescription opiate abuse, we can reduce heroin abuse.
View the talk here: http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/one-to-one/2015/keith-humphreys-on-the-nationwide-heroin-epidemic.html
I would have never thought about patients jumping from pain pills to heroin. Working at a doctor's office, I saw first hand the number of patients that were prescribed pain medications. It's definitely become the go to after surgeries. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to distinguish between those who actually need these medications because they are in severe pain from the surgery versus those who are just trying to get the prescription pill high. I know that the process to get pain medications is constantly changing. Within the few years I worked at the office, pain medication prescriptions went from being called in like any other medication to only being accepted by pharmacies via a physical script. I can definitely see how people may turn to heroin to feel the same affect. It's sad, but at times it probably is easier to get heroin over the black market over getting a prescription from a doctor
ReplyDelete