When you are in physical pain from a surgery or a major injury, you can go to your doctor and they can prescribe you a painkiller. This opioid painkiller, called Oxycontin, comes in a high enough dosage where the pain becomes manageable but not too high where you are sedated.
But what happens when your doctor also does not limit how long you should take Oxycontin or how many refills you can get on this prescription at your pharmacy? Then, since it was so effective for your pain after your surgery or injury, you begin taking the pills when you have other pain. As you take these pills whenever you feel pain, you have no idea the impact this behavior has on your health and as a result, you become addicted.
Opioid addiction is a currently a public health crisis in the United States. The Surgeon General has been spreading awareness about this problem, as 2.1 million Americans are addicted to the opioid painkillers that their doctors have prescribed them. Although opioid painkillers have been legal in the United States since 1999 when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved their use as a prescription painkiller, The National Institute of Health (NIH) reports that 467,000 Americans are also addicted to the illegal drug heroin, another form of opioid, making this a larger problem because it involves drugs that are both legal and illegal.
What makes opioids so addicting is their ability to block pain receptors that are located in the brain and on nerve cells. When your body is in pain, this physical feeling reaches the receptors on your nerve cells and the message is relayed to your brain. However, opioids block this message that the nerve cells are sending to the brain, causing you to not know how severe your pain really is.
If someone is addicted to opioids, they develop a dependence on these drugs. Tolerance to these drugs also increases, causing an addict to take more to get high. Opioids have the ability to block pain in those who take the drug, whether it is prescription opioid painkillers like Oxycontin or heroin. In an addict, this pain can either be physical or emotional, as the feeling of being high off of opioids allows one to feel as though they cannot feel any pain.
Although there is being awareness spread about this problem throughout the United States, opioid painkillers are still being prescribed for pain. Since the FDA approved opioid painkillers for medical use in 1999, sales of this drug have only increased . In addition, the rates of overdose have also increased but doctors still prescribe opioid painkillers to patients even if they have a history of overdose. NIH estimates that overdose deaths have quadrupled since the FDA’s approval of opioid painkillers, all of which could be prevented with more regulations on the prescription of opioid painkillers.
Opioid painkillers are commonly used for pain management. However, doctors prescribe opioid painkillers for all pain, including chronic pain that could be managed without an opioid prescription, which could put someone at a higher risk for addiction. This begs the question of who is to blame for this addiction in the United States?
Although we can blame patients for their reckless use of opioid painkillers, the doctors are also to blame for prescribing these medications as well as not putting limits on how these prescriptions should be used. If doctors were not so prescription happy and referred patients who did not need opioids to alternative care specialists, then the number of those who were addicted to opioids would decrease. Putting limits on the time the opioid painkiller should be taken as well as limiting refills based on recovery will also decrease the number of people who are addicted, as this will help regulate how much of the drug is being distributed.
As opioid addiction continues to be a problem in the United States, it will not change how the healthcare system is run. Pharmaceutical companies will continue to make profits off of these prescriptions of opioid painkillers. In addition, under health insurance plans like Medicare Part B, it allows providers to be reimbursed for prescribing these drugs. This means that doctors get paid for writing these opioid painkiller prescriptions in exchange for the patient coming to see them for care, even if their patient becomes addicted or has an overdose.
Overall, the opioid addiction in the United States will continue to get worse, not better. Although action has been taken on the national level to bring awareness to this issue, a policy has not been implemented to reduce the amount of opioid prescriptions that are being written. In addition, there has been little regulation of heroin, making it a serious problem as more people use the drug illegally. The only way to improve this problem is through health policy, but until then, people will continue to be addicted to opioids.
