Prescription Drug Abuse
David was a junior in high school. He started hanging with the wrong crowd and smoking marijuana. However, with his final year of high school approaching he wanted a change in his life. He joined the boxing team and quit doing drugs, but one Saturday night and that all ended. David was hanging out with a few friends and he was offered a patch that was supposed to make him feel very good. He didn't know what was in the patch, but it contained Fentanyl which is a special pain reliever for cancer patients. His friend told him to cut open the patch and eat what was inside. The next morning, David never woke up. Eight weeks later Liz Wiggins found out that it was the Fentanyl that killed her son (Fox News). "In 2004 there were 15 million Americans ages 12 and up that took Prescription Drugs and used them non-medically "(Prescription Drugs: Their use and Abuse). This paper will examine the causes of prescription drug abuse and the solutions such as providing more education and enforcing the distribution of prescription drugs.
One of the main causes of prescription drug abuse is the lack of education for both doctors and patients. People usually use prescription drugs to loose weight, get high, and get stronger. Many people who consume drugs do not know the dangers that exist while consuming them. Patients normally don’t think to themselves that these medications are dangerous because they come from Pharmacies and are provided from doctors. However, prescription drugs can be just as deadly and detrimental to your health like a gun or drinking alcohol can be. Most people don’t care to properly store them either. If prescription drugs aren't treated at the recommended temperature, at the right dosage, or taken by the right person, you can take something that was meant to save lives and turn it into something that can seriously hurt or make you very sick. One of the most dangerous prescription drugs out there right now is OxyCotin. OxyCotin is a prescription drug pain reliever that's designed to slowly release medicine over time by form of a capsule. Abusers bypass that by chewing, injecting, and even snorting the medicine in the drug (Meadows, Michelle). Prescription Drugs: Their Use and Abuse says when a person takes so much over the safe dosage amount the drug can actually have very different effects on your body.
The documentary states that over 27,000 deaths a year are due to overdose from heroin and other opioids. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015 prescription pain relievers account for 20,101 overdose deaths, and 12,990 overdose deaths are related to heroin (Rudd et al., 2010-2015). The documentary’s investigation gives the history of how the heroin epidemic started, with a great focus on the hospice movement. We are presented with the idea that once someone is addicted to painkillers, the difficulty in obtaining the drug over a long period of time becomes too expensive and too difficult. This often leads people to use heroin. This idea is true as a 2014 survey found that 94% of respondents who were being treated for opioid addiction said they chose to use heroin because prescription opioids were “more expensive and harder to obtain (Cicero et al., 2014).” Four in five heroin users actually started out using prescription painkillers (Johns, 2013). This correlation between heroin and prescription painkiller use supports the idea presented in the documentary that “prescription opiates are heroin prep school.”
Almost one hundred years ago, prescription drugs like morphine were available at almost any general store. Women carried bottles of very addictive potent opiate based pain killers in their purse. Many individuals like Edgar Allen Poe died from such addictions. Since that time through various federal, state and local laws, drugs like morphine are now prescription drugs; however, this has not stopped the addiction to opiate based pain killers. Today’s society combats an ever increasing number of very deadly addictive drugs from designer drugs to narcotics to the less potent but equally destructive alcohol and marijuana. With all of these new and old drugs going in and out of vogue with addicts, it appears that the increase of misuse and abuse is founded greater in the prescription opiate based painkillers.
We are introduced to the story of Matt Schoonover, a young man who had recently obtained his masters degree from Yale. He had grown up “attending a Christian private school, and a prominent church” (2). Matt had begun abusing pills, though he was originally prescribed them by a doctor. Even after undergoing detoxification and then rehab, Matt could not curb his addiction. “Unable to afford street Oxycontin, Matt switched to black tar heroin, brought in from Mexico” (3). We are told how this is unfortunately quite common. People who are prescribed pills often end up abusing them; and once they can no longer afford the high prices of OxyContin they switch to black tar heroin. This transition is often what leads to overdoses, as black tar heroin is extremely deadly and overdoses like Matt’s are common. This is just one story out of tens of thousands of similar stories that all have the same ending. The opiate crisis is a problem that few recognize because it crept up on a majority of Americans. Young people throughout the nation were not using drugs in public, but privately in their own
More than often, American’s argue that if we have the technology to gain access to these “miracle meds”, then we should take advantage of it. To receive an opposing view, the National Institute of Drug Abuse asked teens around America why they think prescription drugs are overused, and the results were shocking; 62%: “Easy to get from parent's medicine cabinets”, 51%: “They are not illegal drugs”, 49%: “Can claim to have prescription if caught”, 43%: “They are cheap”, 35%: “Safer to use than illegal drugs”, 33%: “Less shame attached to using”, 32%: “Fewer side effects than street drugs”, 25%: “Can be used as study aids”, and 21%: “Parents don't care as much if caught”. I believe the major problem here isn’t the medication, but instead the fact that our nation is extremely uninformed on the “do’s and dont’s” of prescription medication. When “the United States is 5 percent of the world’s population and consumes 75 percent of the the world's prescription drugs” (CDC), there is a problem present, no matter the reason. Clearly, many critics believe the breathtaking amount of pills we consume in America is simply for the better good, but tend to forget the effects that are soon to follow.
Daniel is a 43 year old Caucasian male who identified as heterosexual. Daniel is currently married to Sandy for year and together they have a son. Daniel drinks a gallon of Vodka every day. He wakes up around three AM to drink to avoid withdrawal sickness. Daniel sickness includes seizure, shaking, heart rate and sweat perfurcelly. Daniel reported that he needs to have alcohol in his system in order to function at all. Daniel also abuses multiple prescription medications on a daily basis; 15 prescription a day narcotic and opines for pain control. Daniel is also abusing cough syrup.
Almost everybody on Long Island, and probably all around the world, has been prescribed a drug by a doctor before— whether it was to knock out a nasty virus, or relieve pain post injury or surgery. However, what many people don’t realize is that these drugs can have highly addictive qualities, and more and more people are becoming hooked, specifically teenagers. But when does harmlessly taking a prescription drug to alleviate pain take the turn into the downward spiral of abuse? The answer to that question would be when the user begins taking the drug for the “high” or good feelings brought along with it—certainly not what it was prescribed for (1). The amount of teens that abuse prescription medications has been rapidly increasing in recent
Years ago, the common image of an adolescent drug abuser was a teen trying to escape from reality on illegal substances like cocaine, heroin, or marijuana. Today, there is a great discrepancy between that perception and the reality of who is likely to abuse drugs. A teenage drug abuser might not have to look any further than his or her parent’s medicine chest to ‘score.’ Prescription drug abuse by teens is on the rise. Also, teens are looking to prescription drugs to fulfill different needs other than to feel good or escape the pressures of adulthood. Teens may be just as likely to resort to drugs with ‘speedy’ side effects, like Ritalin to help them study longer, as they are to use prescription painkillers to check out of reality. Pressures on teens are growing, to succeed in sports or to get high grades to get into a good college (Pressures on today’s teens, 2008, theantidrug). Furthermore, because prescriptions drugs are prescribed by doctors they are less likely to be seen as deleterious to teens’ health. A lack of awareness of the problem on the part of teens, parents and society in general, the over-medication of America, and the greater stresses and pressures put upon teens in the modern world have all conspired to create the growing problem of prescription drug abuse by teens.
According to the Medilexicon’s Medical Dictionary, Addiction is “Habitual psychological or physiologic dependence on a substance or practice that is beyond voluntary control”(Nordqvist, 2009). This corresponds to the definition given by the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) that addiction is “When an individual persists in use of alcohol or other drugs despite problems related to use of the substance, substance dependence may be diagnosed. Compulsive and repetitive use may result in tolerance to the effect of the drug and withdrawal symptoms when use is reduced or stopped. This along with Substance Abuse are considered Substance Use Disorders” (Nordqvist, 2009).
Bernstein reflects upon parents are often stressed about their children consuming alcohol and marijuana while they are attending school, at a party or sleeping over a friend’s house for the night. That being the case, there is a now a new issue to worry about as well, their own medicine cabinet. Under those circumstances, the article goes on to state; a trend of the abuse of prescription drugs among adolescents rage from, attention-deficit drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall (used to improve concentration or weight loss), painkillers such as OxyContin, Vicodin along with Percocet (Bernstein,
The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such. Not to mention the fact that the doctors who prescribe these opioids often tend to misuse them as well. Abusing these prescribed drugs can “destroy dreams and abort great destinies," and end the possibility of the abuser to have a positive impact in the community.
Many people today view alcohol and drugs very differently than how they were portrayed years ago. In earlier years, there were not that many drugs that were used to save lives as the several different types of drugs that are used today. Today there are drugs used for different treatments for all kinds of diseases. Drugs are a business in which makes billions of dollars, both legally and illegally. Society views drugs majority of the time as something for saving lives, helping society for the better, but many don’t realize the millions of lives it’s destroying. Substance abuse from alcohol, illegal drugs to over the counter drugs and cigarettes can go from a casual once and a while thing to becoming an addiction. Substance abuse can be a huge gateway to addiction that can escalate very quickly. A lot of the time we convince ourselves that people chose to do these drugs so frequently, that addiction is a willing option they do to them-selves. Substance abuse and addiction are more than an individual problem it is a social issue.
In accordance to the world drug report in 2010, “the misuse of prescription drugs, including opioids, benzodiazepines, and synthetic prescription stimulants, is a growing health problem in a number of developed and developing countries.” An overdosage can occur both by the obtaining of legitimized prescriptions or by obtaining drugs that was not prescribed. The issue is rather complex because the root of the problem is very disputable. The difficulty in preventing diversion while ensuring accessibility to those who need it for medical purpose proposes the complication of establishing an effective policy on prescription drug abuse. Policy makers or those with the appropriate authority must go through complicated procedures to exactly pinpoint improper or illegitimate prescribing. An existence gap in tracking the distribution of prescription drugs allows for diversion to individuals not prescribed with the following medication. Close monitoring covers more towards illegal drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. Therefore, monitoring non-medical use of prescription drugs is a special case that requires attention in an inventive level. This issue requires immediate attention because not only that there is a rapid increase in the use of these medications, but younger consumers are also turning to this manner. As a matter of fact, 2.6% of people aged 12 years or older have reported using prescription drug non medically in 2005. Within the 12 to 17 years age group, females are more likely to use prescription drugs in a non-medical context than males. The future of the United States is at stake especially when younger individuals are growing into a ‘pill popping culture’ where non-medical use of prescription drugs is already a cultural norm. Most life issues are treated through medication along with the
Drug abuse dates as far back as the Biblical era, so it is not a new phenomenon. “The emotional and social damage and the devastation linked to drugs and their use is immeasurable.” The ripple of subversive and detrimental consequences from alcoholism, drug addictions, and addictive behavior is appalling. Among the long list of effects is lost productivity, anxiety, depression, increased crime rate, probable incarceration, frequent illness, and premature death. The limitless consequences include the destruction to personal development, relationships, and families (Henderson 1-2). “Understandably, Americans consider drug abuse to be one of the most serious problems” in the fabric of society. And although “addiction is the result of voluntary drug use, addiction is no longer voluntary behavior, it’s uncontrollable behavior,” says Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Torr 12-13).
Users who abuse drugs by prescription improperly use them by taking somebody else 's prescription, taking medication to get high, or taking medication in other ways than applied
West Virginia has one of the highest rates for prescription drug abuse, and overdose in the nation. In order to change this it is important to understand what pharmacists do, their role in prevention, and the severity of prescription drug abuse. Pharmacists are known to dispense prescription drugs to patients and inform them about their use; However, one aspect of their career most people overlook is that Pharmacists must keep a sharp eye out for criminals looking to abuse these prescribed drugs.