Painkiller Use On The Rise
According to the latest surveys, painkiller use and painkiller prescription is rising every month in the United States. Between 1997 and 2005, the sales of five of the largest pain medications—codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine—rose by 88 percent. The numbers break down to more than 200,000 pounds each year, an average of 300 milligrams of opiate drugs for every American.
There are a number of reasons why opiate painkiller prescriptions are increasing so explosively. According to an AP investigation, it may be that the rise may be due in part to the increased age of the population. Along with age comes pain and along with pain comes pain management and opiate painkiller prescriptions.
Another reason may be the unending commercials promoting prescription drugs on television and in magazines. The marketing budgets for major drug making companies has nearly tripled in some cases with a final price tag in the middle billions. Their profit margin? Three or four times higher than in other industries. Though it’s not the opiate prescription drugs that are usually touted in 30-second segments during late night shows and the mid-morning hours, there is a common bait-and-switch theory: patients come in with one drug in mind and leave with a prescription for a much stronger one.
And yet another reason for the continuous upswing in painkiller prescriptions may be that ideas in the medical industry are changing concerning pain management. After three decades of opiate prescriptions, doctors are now opting to obliterate pain rather than manage it with non-opioid-based prescriptions or advise that pain is a necessary part of healing.
Whatever the reason, opioid-based prescriptions are obviously more common and whenever someone takes regular doses of opiate pain relievers, drug addiction is imminent. If you or someone you love has been prescribed too high a dose to manage chronic pain and find that debilitating addiction has become a constant obstacle, then Suboxone treatment may be the only way out. If you have commitments—community, family, career—and simply can’t take months out of your life to go to an inpatient rehab, the outpatient nature of Suboxone detox will allow you to break your addiction to opiates at home in the same manner in which the addiction first began. It’s worth it to take a look at the facts and figure out if this may be the way out of the haze that life becomes when regular doses of opiates are a part of the equation.
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