Helping Pain with Prescription Painkillers Can Lead to Addiction

With as many as 50 million Americans suffering some kind of chronic pain at any one time, prescription painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin have an important role to play in the medical community. But I need to warn you that with prescription painkiller use both patients and doctors must be aware of the risks of addiction.

People who find themselves addicted to prescription medications often deny their disorder with statements such as: "It’s legal, isn’t it?" or "I get it from doctors." But many Americans have come to view pain killers as a harmless treatment for problems that go well beyond the physical pain for which it was originally prescribed.

According to the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), approximately 4.7 million Americans used prescription drugs nonmedically for the first time in 2002—2.5 million of those were opioid pain relievers like oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, methadone, and combinations that include these drugs. 5.0 percent of 12th-graders reported using OxyContin without a prescription in the past year, and 9.3 percent reported using Vicodin (one of the most commonly abused illicit drugs among teenagers).

However, despite its addictiveness many doctors continue to prescribe these opioids for pain, even though mild to moderate pain can be treated with physical therapy, acupuncture, or biofeedback. Research does suggest that opioids used for non-cancer pain both decreases the pain and causes a moderate improvement in function and quality of life, but this diminishes greatly for people who develop addictions to prescription pain medications – many of whom did not receive any warning of the drug's abuse potential.

Patients with histories of addiction can have a very difficult time distinguishing between taking the medication for the relief of physical pain from the escapist motives that characterized their addictions. Timberline Knolls recommends that patients have support with them when they need to take pain medication, that they not do it alone.

For many people, periodic use can lead to a compulsive need to use, particularly if the person is self-medicating. Any opioid prescribed carries an abuse potential, and patients and doctors need to be and stay aware of this.