Treating opiate addiction

Because so many people become addicted to opiates from prescriptions for pain, the opiate addict thinks of their problem as a pain management condition, but this is usually just a way to minimize or deny the addiction problem. Everyone involved, including healthcare providers, can pretend it’s a pain management problem, but when the person misuses opiates years after the original reason of pain management, it makes no sense to treat the problem as anything but an addiction problem.

Not only is it counter-productive to use opiates for pain management over a period of years, when addiction occurs there is misuse. When there is misuse, it becomes impossible for the addict to get prescription opiates, so they turn to the street to buy drugs and often wind up on heroin. This is from CASA Columbia:

A major contribution to the opioid epidemic is the over prescription of painkillers by doctors, a trend that is especially pronounced in the Northeast region of the United States. Over prescribing can ultimately result in an addiction to the medication. But what happens when the prescription runs out or becomes too expensive to be sustainable? In many cases, the individual seeks heroin, a cheaper alternative that can be accessed without having to go through a medical professional. In fact, about 75 percent of new heroin users in the past decade started out by taking prescription painkillers such as OxyContin, Percocet or Vicodin.

Opiate addicts need treatment regardless of why they started using opiates. Addiction becomes a health issue, and even if it’s an 80 year old female, retired school teacher with 12 grandkids the addiction is the same and requires treatment. We have to stop denying addiction can happen to anyone. Heroin addiction is no longer confined to poor neighborhoods in the inner city, and opiates are opiates are opiates. The body/brain doesn’t know the difference between an opiate that is sold on the street or comes from a pharmacy.

When all healthcare workers can identify the signs and symptoms of addiction and treat it as a health issue rather than making value judgments on the person addicted, maybe we can make progress treating opiate addiction effectively.