How To Recognize Painkiller Addiction

With celebrity drug addiction splashed across every tabloid, 'painkiller addiction' is practically a household term. But when it seems to be affecting your own family, how can you determine whether or not is actually a case of unmanageable addiction, a situation of abuse or simply part and parcel to the experience of taking prescription pain medication? How do you recognize painkiller addiction when it's right in front of you?

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With regular use, even when you follow the prescription exactly as the doctor intended, the body quickly develops a tolerance to opioid-based painkillers. This tolerance is the hallmark of physical dependency, and the beginning of painkiller addiction. When your body stops producing the chemicals it needs to manage pain and create happy feelings naturally, pain pill addiction deepens. Should you try to stop taking your prescription, you will experience serious physical withdrawal symptoms. Your behavior begins to change and your focus shifts to maintaining your pill supply and the amount of the drug in your body.

At Meditox, we offer painkiller addiction treatment to help you break your physical dependency on prescription drugs and help you return to a drug-free life.

How To Recognize Painkiller Addiction: Behavior

Your behavior metamorphoses under the control of opioid-based painkillers. The behavioral characteristics that you may display include a marked lack of motivation, the inability to remember recent conversations, not following through on obligations, saying things that are uncharacteristic and failing to respond to situations or circumstances that would ordinarily induce a reaction.

How To Recognize Painkiller Addiction: Compulsivity

Addiction is defined by using a substance compulsively as well as the lack of control over the addiction or the inability to stop. When you are at the mercy of painkiller addiction, you no longer have the ability to control your behavior. Taking pills seems less like a decision and more of a compulsion. You may think of few things other than getting more pills and making sure that you keep a certain amount of your drug of choice in your system at all times. You may not have any concern about the danger that you put others in or the fact that you're hurting those who love you. Your sole occupation is maintaining your addiction to the point that you let everything else go.

How To Recognize Painkiller Addiction: Physical Dependence

Being physically dependent on prescription painkillers is usually most obvious when you try to stop taking your drug of choice. Within hours after your missed dose, your body physically responds with withdrawal symptoms that start small and steadily increase until they are almost unbearable. They include goose bumps, sweating, runny nose, insomnia, irritability, muscle pain, diarrhea, nausea, stomach cramps, vomiting and chills.

How To Recognize Painkiller Addiction: Physical Tolerance

A physical tolerance is a very common part of prescription drug addiction. This manifests as the need for more and more of the prescription drug in order to simply maintain the original pain relieving and euphoric effects. Some choose to subsidize their prescriptions with fake prescriptions or 'doctor shopping' in hopes of getting more of the drug or by purchasing pills on the street.

Get Treatment for Painkiller Addiction at Meditox

There are many different treatments available or painkiller addiction, so why choose Meditox? Simply, because we provide an unparalleled outpatient treatment that is completely confidential, allowing you to continue to maintain your obligations to your career and family. Call Meditox today to make an appointment and start a life without drugs.

If you feel that Meditox might be the right solution for you or your loved one, please call us for a toll-free and private consultation:

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“Today is week #5! I have my life back, this morning my husband told me he hadn't seen me like this in three years! My daughter told me "your back Mom"! My Fybromyalgia is down to 2 to 3 percent of what it was, I am fully able to live with the Joy and Love and Laughter which has always been my way.”

Mother, Real Estate Agent, 49
August 11, 2006

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