Most Of The Drug Addicts Get Their Fix From Their Doctors

If someone tells you that to get his daily fix of drugs, he goes to his doctor, you would find it difficult to believe him. But the fact is that he may be telling you the truth. In a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine, the researchers have found that most of the high use abusers, i.e., the addicts who take opioids for more than 200 days in a year, are addicted to prescription drugs. This means that to get their daily fix, these addicts obtain a doctor’s prescription. Compared to one in five of those drug addicts who abuse the drug for less than 30 days in a year, every three of five high use abusers depend on a doctor’s prescription to get their opioids.

The study also found that the high use abusers are also three times more likely to go to drug dealers and buy their fix from them rather that getting the drugs from friends or family members.

62% of them are more likely to get these drugs for free from people they are familiar with. On the contrary, the high use abusers are less likely to approach familiar people for their daily fix. Only 26% of them are likely to obtain it from family or friends. They would rather prefer to go to a drug dealer or their doctor.

According to Christopher Jones, the lead author of the study, the research points towards the glaring role that physicians play in drug abuse. Until before the study, the whole focus of controlling drug abuse lay elsewhere.

The programs developed to control drug addiction should concentrate their efforts on ensuring that doctors are more judicious while prescribing drugs that have the potential of being abused. There is a need to develop better screening methods so that patients who genuinely need painkillers can be identified from people who take the drugs only to abuse them later. The doctors need to be trained to differentiate between genuine users and people who want to use the medicines for non-medicinal use and once the abusers are identified, how to assist them.

See Also: FDA Changing Labels On Oxycontin And Other Habit-Forming Painkillers

For their study, Dr. Jones and his colleagues collected government data on drug abuse between the period of 2008 and 2011. Analysis of this data brought forth some interesting facts:

• Prescription opioids were abused at least once a year to get a high by a whopping 12 million of the American population above the age of 12.
• These opioids were either obtained from family members or friends, purchased from somebody known or from a drug dealer, stolen from a familiar person or obtained through a doctor’s prescription.
• Among the high use abusers, 27.3% were found to get their drugs through medical prescription and 38.4% bought them from drug dealers.
• 5.3% of occasional users resorted to theft to get their fix compared to 2.9% of regular users.

Abuse Of Prescription Drugs Is More Common Than Abuse Of Other Drugs

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, prescription drugs are abused more frequently compared to the combined abuse of cocaine, heroin and ecstasy. Around 6 million Americans are believed to be addicted to prescription opioids while another 50 million Americans admit that they have tried prescription painkillers for non-medical use at least once in their life.

Valium and Xanax are the commonly abused central nervous system depressants while Adderall and Ritalin are the commonly abused stimulants of the central nervous system.

Doctors admit that most of these addictions start with a safe prescription. Patients are advised the medicine to get relief from their condition but soon they get hooked to it. For example, a patient may be prescribed an opioid analgesic to combat pain. He is supposed to take it once a day. However, if the pain is not relieved with that, the patient may increase the frequency or dosage on his own. Gradually, the patient gets addicted to the medicine and cannot live without it.

Few physicians advise that if your pain does not get resolved within two weeks of starting a painkiller, you should consult another doctor rather than continuing with the same medicine in increased dose or increased frequency. This minimizes your chances of getting addicted to the painkiller.

There are people who get addicted to prescription drugs while using a legitimate prescription, and then there are other set of people who abuse the prescription drugs deliberately to get a high. This group generally consists of teenagers and young adults, though old age is no bar for abusing drugs. Prescription drugs are abused for these common reasons:

• The person wants to get a high
• The person wants relief from stress and tension.
• The person wants to reduce his appetite in order to lose weight,
• The person wants to be accepted by his peers.
• The person wants to experiment.
• He feels that taking prescription drugs is legal as compared to buying drugs from a peddler.
• He feels that prescription drugs are safer and would cause less harm compared to drugs supplied by dealers.

Considering the enormity of the problem, it is very important to sensitize the doctors about it. 

See Also: The Dangers Of Prescription Drugs

However, it is very important to know your patient and understand his psyche before writing the prescription. It is said that the doctors understand their patient the best. They should use this judgment before prescribing a medicine. It is also important to know about the symptoms of drug addiction and identify an addict once a doctor comes across him. If he finds that his patient has become addicted to a medicine, it is the duty of the doctor to counsel him and guide him to a de-addiction center.