It’s a sad commentary on our society, but one of the ways that people outside of addiction—those who do not suffer from opiate addiction themselves or love someone who does—realize that the problem is real and growing is when crime rates grow up. And how do they know that crime rates are rising? When taxes go up to pay for jails, cops, COs, courts….

Well, crime rates are on their way up and in a very specific arena, one that is letting the general public know that prescription drug addiction is a real and serious thing and one the most quickly rising substances of addiction in the country.

Criminals Target Pharmacies

It’s not just little old ladies getting their purses stolen or people having their cars broken into. The crimes are less about getting money to fund the habit and more focused on getting the drug itself. Ere go, pharmacy crime.

In Duluth, Minnesota, for example, Deputy Police Chief John Beyer said that diverted pharmaceuticals were a growing concern. They include:

“…stealing prescription sheets, adding a line to turn a prescription for 10 pills into 70 pills, robbing drug stores and stealing pills from a family’s bathroom medicine cabinet after hosting a party.”

Says Beyer: “They’re predominately stealing it for themselves because they need it, and they are desperate. Over the last couple of years we’ve had several pharmacy robberies where criminals enter and take pharmaceutical drugs and not ask for any money. They don’t need the money to buy drugs because they get the drugs in the robbery.’’

Pharm Parties

And it’s not just the pharmacies that are getting ripped off. It used to be the parents’ liquor cabinet got raid; now, it’s the family medicine cabinet. Kids are having ‘pharm parties,’ where each of them bring a bottle of something that they snagged at home or somewhere else.

One officer describes it: “A pharm party is basically a bunch of young people that get together and everyone will bring some type of pharmaceutical or prescription narcotic to the party. Someone will say, ‘My grandma takes Lortabs, I’ll bring the Lortabs.’ Someone else brings Ritalin. Someone brings Oxycontin. Basically, it creates a smorgasbord of prescription narcotics at the party.’’

Then they mix the pills not just with other pills but with weed and alcohol as well, sometimes with the mistaken belief that since it isn’t a street drug cooked up in somebody’s kitchen that it must be safe.

Prescription Drug Crime Affects the Users Most

Anyone who has ever had to pay for a long-term prescription to opiate painkillers knows: the bill is no joke. As if the cost of prescription drugs wasn’t high enough, the rise in crime in this arena means that those prices aren’t going down anytime soon… and not just on opiates.

Then there’s the issue of accessibility. All this forgery and drug-seeking behavior has made the medical establishment extremely wary of treating people for pain, and not without good reason. But it makes it that much more difficult to get the meds you need when you need them.

Any ideas on how to get this issue under control?

As most parents and teenagers have undoubtedly heard, tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana are usually cited as “gateway drugs” that encourage long-term use of illicit drugs like cocaine or heroin. While this isn’t always the case, researchers in Sweden have found new evidence that marijuana use by teenagers creates a fondness for all opiate-derived drugs later in life.

New Research on Marijuana and Opioid Addiction

Researchers isolated six teenage rats who were given doses of THC comparative to human consumption of one joint every three days between the ages of 12 to 18 years. Six other rats were used as a control group, and were not administered the drug.

A week after the rats reached adulthood, all twelve were given the ability to consume as much heroin as they wanted, just by pushing a lever.

“At first, all the rats behaved the same and began to self-administer heroin frequently,” reports Jasmin Hurd, the study’s lead researcher. “But after a while, they stabilized their daily intake at a certain level. We saw that the ones that had been on THC as teenagers stabilized their intake at a much higher level than the others – they appeared to be less sensitive to the effects of heroin. And this continued throughout their lives.”

Reduced sensitivity equates to larger doses, which in turn increases the risk for addiction.

Changes in the Brain Recall Fondness for Drugs

The next phase of the study looked at specific opioid receptors in the rats’ brains. The rats who were given THC as teenagers showed significant alterations within areas of the brain that control reward responses and feel-good emotions – the same areas of the brain associated with addiction.

“These are very specific changes and they are long-lasting, so the brain may ‘remember’ past cannabis experimentation and be vulnerable to harder drugs later in life,” Hurd says.

Know Yourself and Take Precautions against Opioid Addiction

If you used marijuana as a teenager, or you’re struggling with dependence or addiction now, knowing which drugs contain opioids can help you steer clear of potential addiction.

• Opiates in their natural chemical state are known as codeine, morphine, and thebaine.
• Semi-synthetic opiates include benzylmorphine, desomorphine, diacetylmorphine (heroin), dipropanoylmorphine, ethlymorphine, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, nicomorphine, oxycodone, and oxymorphone.
• Fully synthetic opioids are prescribed as fentanyl, methadone, pethidine, propoxyphene, and tramadol.

Read the labels on every drug your doctor prescribes and anytime you purchase over-the-counter medications. Advising doctors and pharmacists that you may be allergic to opioids will allow them to suggest appropriate nonaddictive drugs that will work similiarly. Arm yourself with information and ask for alternative medications that do not contain opiates.

Above all, the most important thing you can do to lessen your risk for addiction to opioids, is avoid them at all costs. If you never get started, you don’t have to worry about how you’ll stop.

So what do you think? Was marijuana a gateway for your opiate dependence? Do you think marijuana alone acts as a gateway drug, or are there extenuating circumstances that push a person towards continued drug use?

We’ve talked a lot here about the problem of chronic pain and the issue of treating it in light of the issue of painkiller addiction, and here’s a bit of news that may add to that conversation: it seems that there is new evidence that opiate treatment for chronic pain may actually make the pain worse for some people. This condition has a name: Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia or OIH.

What is Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia?
 
Simply put, it’s the effect of certain opiates like morphine that cause you to developed an increased sensitivity to pain despite their pain killing effects.

Peggy Compton, RN, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Nursing at the UCLA School of Nursing, Los Angeles, and a well-known researcher and author in the pain management field. She says: “Actually, this possible negative effect of opioids, such as morphine, to cause increased sensitivity to pain was observed in the 19th Century. Today, we call this opioid-induced hyperalgesia, or OIH.”

How Prevalent is Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia?

Not so much, apparently. The majority of people on painkillers for chronic pain will not develop the condition, but those who do will find it very hard to handle. There are a number of problems that OIH causes in addition to increased sensitivity to pain. These include:

* The original condition that caused the pain will get worse
* A much higher tolerance to painkillers and therefore an increased physical dependence which in turn means worse opiate withdrawal symptoms in the event you stop taking your prescriptions
* All the drug seeking behavior that accompanies prescription drug addiction because your pain simply is not eased by opiates anymore

This means that those who have OIH may be lumped into the category of addict right off the bat thanks to the obsession with getting more painkillers, the inability to control their usage of prescription opiates and all the bad behavior that accompanies painkiller addiction.

How Do You Treat Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia?

Well, it’s not easy. You don’t increase your opiate painkiller dosage, for one thing. And the pain is hard to describe and does not stay central to the original area where you first experienced pain. Non-opioid prescriptions may help in some cases. Others may switch from short-acting painkillers to a long-acting version. Switching up the medication to another opiate is usually the first course of action. I’m not sure why this helps if it’s still an opiate, but rotating the drug used has been shown to help as well as the inclusion of opioid antagonists like naltrexone.

Compton wrote an article called “The OIH Paradox: Can Opioids Make Pain Worse?” For more information on OIH, check out this Pain Topic or other Pain Treatment Topics press releases.