Prescription Drugs Abuse and Addiction
You or a loved one may be wondering about the dangers of abusing prescription drugs. Could an addiction develop, and might it be dangerous?
When used to treat medical conditions and as directed, prescription drugs can help many people to lead less painful lives. But once these substances are abused, the initial euphoric effects easily change to negative side effects. Prescription drug abuse and addiction place a person at risk of the same dangers as those associated with illicit drugs.
Luckily, effective treatment programs can help with abuse and addiction.
What Is Prescription Drug Abuse?
When you take a prescription drug in a way other than how the doctor prescribed it, or when you use it for recreational purposes, this is called prescription drug misuse.
This may involve crushing and snorting drugs instead of swallowing them as prescribed, forging prescriptions to obtain more of the drug, using someone else’s prescription, or using the prescription medication as a means to achieve an effect instead of treating a medical condition.
Prescription medicines are easy to obtain, and perhaps easier to get than street drugs. Those who misuse prescription drugs can easily get them from family members or friends. Young people may find them at home in the medicine cabinet, as did two-thirds of the teens who misused pain relievers in figures shared by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. At the same time, illegal facilities called pill mills regularly prescribe painkillers without identifying, diagnosing, or examining a person. Prescription medicine is also sold on the street similar to other illegal drugs.
There is a common belief that prescription drug use and abuse are generally safe since healthcare providers prescribe these substances. But these medicines carry the same risks as illicit street drugs, and addiction to prescription drugs can keep a person from stopping despite all the harmful consequences it causes.
Commonly Misused Prescription Drugs
There are three classes of medications that are commonly abused, either for their euphoric effects, to lose weight, or to gain more focus for studying.
The first class includes opioids or narcotics, known as opioid painkillers. These include codeine, hydrocodone, morphine, and oxycodone. These medications are intended to treat pain.
CNS depressants form another class. They slow down brain activity by increasing the activity of GABA neurotransmitters. This makes a person feel calm, drowsy, or sleepy, and this is why these are intended to treat anxiety, panic attacks, or sleep disorders. This class includes sedatives, hypnotics, and tranquilizers.
The third class involves stimulants. These are used to increase energy and alertness and increase a person’s ability to pay attention. This is why they are used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and sometimes narcolepsy.
What Are the Risks of Prescription Drug Abuse?
Abusing prescription drugs comes with many risks. The medical consequences can be especially dangerous when a person uses medications at high doses, medications that were prescribed for someone else, or when they combine them with over-the-counter drugs or other illegal drugs.
Higher Risk of Prescription Drug Addiction
The most prevalent risk of prescription drug abuse is that the substances in prescription drugs are powerful enough to cause dependence both physically and psychologically. Any repeated exposure can also lead to addiction. This can even occur if a doctor prescribes painkillers to a person who is suffering from pain after surgery and they take the drugs as intended.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2.3 million people had a prescription opioid use disorder, 1.2 million people had a sedative use disorder, and 758,000 people had a prescription stimulant use disorder in 2020. Addiction to prescription drugs is very similar to illicit drug addiction, in that a person will have signs and symptoms that include tolerance (when a person needs larger doses to get the same effect from their prescription drugs), cravings, and withdrawal symptoms. In some cases, withdrawal can even be life-threatening.
Dangerous Behavior
Like most substance abuse, prescription drug abuse leads to poor judgment. Especially when an addiction has formed, a person may engage in all sorts of risky behavior to maintain drug abuse. Behavior such as stealing someone else’s prescription or medication, lying to others to obtain pills, buying them on the street, or forging prescriptions places the person at an increased risk of criminal activity.
Additionally, prescription drug abuse comes with the risk of harm to others. A person who is dizzy or drowsy and drives or handles machinery may cause injury or car accidents.
Physical and Mental Effects
Despite the different effects on both the body and mind that each class of prescription drug comes with, they are all related to general harm. These include a decline in mental health or a rise in mental health issues such as depression or anxiety, and impaired memory or learning ability as cognitive effects. Physically, brain, liver, kidney, and heart damage are common effects of abusing prescription medications.
Some risk factors make prescription drug abuse even more dangerous. These include high dosages; higher doses of prescription medication place a person at higher risk of an overdose. At the same time, combining prescription medication with other drugs, whether recreational or legal like alcohol, also increases the chances of overdose.
Effects of prescription opioids
Abusing pain medicine can lead to low blood pressure, constipation, and excessive sweating. It can also confuse a person, and lead to depression. The most dangerous effect of prescription painkillers is a slowed breathing rate. It could potentially lead to completely stopped breathing, coma and death.
Opioid dependence can also lead to using other drugs. The Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that the increase in the use of prescription drugs has also led to an explosion in heroin abuse. Those who reported prior use of prescription pain relievers had a heroin abuse rate 19 times higher than those who did not.
Effects of Central Nervous System depressants
After a calming effect, CNS depressants cause drowsiness, excessive sleepiness, and unsteady gait. A person may experience confusion, have involuntary tics and feel dizzy. CNS depressants come with the additional risk of very dangerous withdrawal symptoms. Abruptly stopping or reducing it could result in nervous system hyperactivity, and can lead to seizures. Taking CNS depressants with prescription painkillers, over-the-counter cold medicines, or allergy medicines, as well as alcohol, could severely slow down someone’s breathing and heart rate – and even kill them.
Effects of Stimulants
While stimulant abuse is common among college students as they believe it can help them study through the night, it can lead to paranoia and extreme aggression. A person may also experience appetite suppression, which can cause weight loss. Physically, a dangerously high body temperature and an irregular heartbeat mean that abusing stimulants such as ADHD medicines could lead to heart failure or seizures.
Risk of Overdose Deaths
While prescription drug abuse and addiction can lead to an overdose as easily as illicit drugs can, the risk increases when the medication is abused in combination with other substances. Prescription drug abuse has led to many drug poisoning deaths, with opioid-related deaths being the most prevalent. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports opioid overdose death rates increasing, with around 16,000 drug overdose deaths involving opioid analgesics in 2020, while the Centers for Disease Control reports 263,000 US people have lost their lives due to prescription opioids from 1999 to 2020.
Around 12,290 people died from an overdose involving benzodiazepines in 2020 (a CNS depressant). Approximately 5,597 died from an overdose involving antidepressants.
It is always best to be aware of signs and symptoms and seek treatment help for prescription drug abuse and addiction before it is too late.
Where Can I Find Treatment for Prescription Drug Abuse?
If you or a loved one is worried about prescription drug use, Brookdale is here to help.
We know that every person’s path to recovery is different and that prescription drug abuse and addiction require individual care. That is why our highly skilled and credentialed professionals are dedicated to treating every person with the deepest level of compassion, respect, and dignity.
It is also why Brookdale offers an all-inclusive therapeutic environment of healing that utilizes many pathways to recovery, and a treatment program tailored to meet your individual needs. Incorporating an array of therapeutic techniques, among them evidence-based treatment and 12-step integration, we can help you take back control of your life and lead one that is free of drug abuse.
Additional therapies and services including yoga, mindfulness and meditation, health and wellness activities, family education, and relapse prevention all serve to provide you with better chances for long-term sobriety.