Prescription Drug Abuse- Prescription Drug Addiction
Millions of Americans are suffering from prescription drug addiction. Many do not realize that several prescription drugs are highly addictive, and if not used properly, can lead them into drug dependence and addiction.
Others, notably teens and younger, realize that prescription drugs are an easy and, in their minds, ’safe’ way to get a ‘high’ feeling.
Lack of proper information on prescription drugs by young and old alike has caused many to succumb to this addiction, in many cases following in the footsteps of those addicted to street drugs: physically dependent on them, in many cases stealing or ‘doctor shopping’ to get their next prescription drug fix- either way they are drug addicts.
Types of Prescription Drugs
The types of prescription drugs most commonly abused are:
- Central Nervous System (CNS) Depressants: Barbiturates, Tranquilizers, Xanax, Valium, Rohypnol, Placidil, Ativan, Klonopine, Librium, Quaalude
- Prescription Painkillers Opioids, narcotics, hydrocodone, morphine, fentanyl, codeine, Oxycontin, Percocet, Percodan, Darvon, Dilaudid, Demerol
- Prescription Stimulants: Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, Dexedrine
Prescription Drug Abuse- What Are CNS Depressants?
Depressants are a group of drugs that depress the central nervous system.
Taken as prescribed, depressants often help relieve anxiety, tension, insomnia, muscle spasms, and irritability. When abused, like many other drugs, they are addictive. The most common depressants are alcohol, Barbiturates, tranquilizers, Rohypnol, Placidil, Xanax and Valium.
People use these to relax, to ease tension, and to help them forget their problems. These are prescribed by doctors, but often are abused by patients or by family members, especially young ones, who get them from the family medicine cabinet, abuse them, and often get addicted to them.
What Are The Effects Of CNS Depressants?
Doctors to relieve anxiety or treat insomnia prescribe barbiturates, sedatives, and tranquilizers. Popularly known as downers, these drugs depress the activity of the brain and can be helpful when taken under medical supervision.
In excessive amounts their effects are similar to alcohol intoxication, yet they can be extremely dangerous. An overdose of depressants causes slurred speech, impaired coordination, and irregular breathing. A heavy overdose can result in muscle spasms, vomiting, convulsions, unconsciousness, and death. Continued use may lead to dependence and increased tolerance.
Addiction Results: Users need larger and larger doses to get the same effect, which brings them, continually closer to the fatal dose. Overdose is more likely to occur when users mix depressants with alcohol. Users become disoriented, confused, and can’t remember how much they took. The list of people who have died from depressants and alcohol is long. A few of the better known are Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Janis Joplin.
Barbiturates
More than 2,500 varieties of barbiturates exist. Doctors prescribe barbiturates to treat anxiety, agitation, and insomnia, and give them to patients before surgery to make them drowsy. Some barbiturates help control medical conditions such as high blood pressure, epilepsy, and ulcers.
However, barbiturates are also sold in the illegal drug market with street names like “downers” and “goof balls.”
People under the influence of barbiturates behave as if they are drunk on alcohol. They lose their inhibitions and show marked changes in their behavior. In many individuals, side effects include nausea, nervousness, rash, and diarrhea. People on barbiturates may have difficulty thinking and making decisions; they may be emotionally unstable, lack coordination, be disoriented, and have slurred speech.
Tranquilizers
Tranquilizers are drugs that calm people with paranoia or nervous disorders. As an addictive drug, however, no substance other than alcohol has had a greater negative effect on the public.
Until the 1940s, people relied on alcohol to reduce anxiety and to relax. Beginning in 1951, they turned to tranquilizers. Milton, an early tranquilizer, was first used as a muscle relaxer, then as a tension reliever. In 1960, new tranquilizers were developed in the class of benzodiazepines. Today benzodiazepines are sold under the names Xanax, Adivan, Klonopine, Valium and Librium. “Benzo’s” quickly became the primary tranquilizer of choice.
Chloral Hydrate and Rohypnol
Chloral Hydrate, or “knock out drops,” is a drug slipped into a drink to make a person unconscious. Combining chloral hydrate and alcohol creates what is known as a “Mickey Finn.” Chloral hydrate takes effect in about 30 minutes. It irritates the stomach lining, especially if taken repeatedly. Long-term use of large doses of the drug causes physical dependence.
Primarily used by partygoers and nightclub attendees, Rohypnol, or “Roofie,” “Circles,” “Rope,” “Forget Pill,” and “R-Z,” is sometimes slipped into a drink to make a person unconscious much like the fabled “Mickey Finn.” Rohypnol is smuggled into the United States from other countries, where it is used to treat insomnia, anxiety, convulsions and muscle tension. It can cause drowsiness, dizziness, loss of coordination, memory loss and an upset stomach. At higher doses it causes coma, respiratory depression and death.
Placidyl and Quaalude
Placidyl is a short-term sedative hypnotic drug. It causes side effects such as facial numbness, blurred vision, nausea, dizziness, gastric problems, and skin rashes. Combined with alcohol, Placidyl can kill. Quaalude or methaqualone, is a barbiturate-like, sedative-hypnotic drug.
Quaalude was first introduced as an anti-malaria drug in the 1950s. After years of abuse, Quaalude distribution and prescriptions became strictly controlled. Because of adverse publicity, methaqualone has not been manufactured in the United States since 1985, though large amounts are still illegally imported. Severe overdoses cause delirium, convulsions and seizures.
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Prescription Drug Abuse- What Are Opioids?
Prescription drug abuse- Oxycontin
Opioids are commonly known as prescription painkillers. These are often prescribed for effective pain-relieving, properties. Studies have shown that properly managed medical use of these (taken exactly as prescribed) is safe, can manage pain effectively, and rarely causes addiction.
Among the compounds that fall within this class are hydrocodone (e.g., Vicodin), oxycodone (e.g., OxyContin—an oral, controlled-release form of the drug), morphine, fentanyl, codeine, and related medications.
Morphine and fentanyl are often used to alleviate severe pain, while codeine is used for milder pain.
Other examples of opioids that can be prescribed to relieve pain include propoxyphene (Darvon); hydromorphone (Dilaudid); and meperidine (Demerol), which is used less often because of its side effects.
In addition to their effective pain-relieving properties, some of these medications can be used to relieve severe diarrhea (for example, Lomotil, also known as diphenoxylate) or severe coughs (codeine).
How are Prescription Painkillers Abused?
Prescription painkillers can be taken orally, or the pills may be crushed and the powder snorted or injected. A number of overdose deaths have resulted from the latter routes of administration, particularly with the drug OxyContin, which was designed to be a slow-release formulation.
Snorting or injecting opioids results in a rapid release of the drug into the bloodstream, exposing the person to high doses and causing many of the reported overdose reactions.
What Adverse Effects Can be Associated with Prescription Painkillers?
Prescription pain medications can produce drowsiness, cause constipation, and, depending upon the amount taken, depress breathing. Taking a large single dose could cause severe respiratory depression or death.
These medications are only safe to use with other substances under a physician’s supervision. Typically, they should not be used with alcohol, antihistamines, barbiturates, or benzodiazepines. Because these substances slow breathing, their combined effects could lead to life-threatening respiratory depression.
What Happens When You Stop Taking Prescription Painkillers?
Repeated exposure to prescription causes the body to adapt, sometimes resulting in tolerance (that is, more of the drug is needed to achieve the desired effect compared to when it was first prescribed) and withdrawal symptoms upon abrupt cessation of drug use.
Thus, individuals taking prescribed painkiller medications should not only be given these medications under appropriate medical supervision, but should also be medically supervised when stopping use in order to reduce or avoid withdrawal symptoms.
Symptoms of withdrawal can include restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps (“cold turkey”), and involuntary leg movements.
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Prescription Drug Abuse-What Are Stimulants?
Adderall Abuse/ Addiction
Drug addiction takes many guises. Whether a student who legally takes Adderall to help them stay awake at night to study, and find themselves hooked, to the housewife trying to lose a few pounds- stimulants are addictive and drug addiction can strike the wealthy, the poor, all social levels and classes. Stories of children trading their Ritalin for other drugs are common. Illegal drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine are also stimulants and are also highly addictive.
Don’t let someone you know become addicted to prescription stimulants- know the facts.
What are Stimulants?
Stimulants such as amphetamines (Adderall, Dexedrine) and methylphenidate (Concerta, Ritalin) have chemical structures that have similar affects as cocaine or methamphetamine When used, they stimulate the body, decrease the apettite, but also increase blood pressure and heart rate, constricts blood vessels, increases blood glucose, and opens up the pathways of the respiratory system.
Stimulants increase alertness, attention, and energy and can produce a sense of euphoria.
As their potential for abuse and addiction became apparent, the use of stimulants began to wane, however non-prescription use of stimulants by children in school has sky-rocketed over the past few years.
Students in colleges are very likely to get prescribed Adderall, which is used to “help them study” and Ritalin is so easily obtained in grade schools and high schools that many users snort Ritalin to get high.
How are these Prescription Stimulants Abused?
Stimulants may be taken orally, but some abusers crush the tablets, dissolve them in water, and inject the mixture; complications can arise from this because insoluble fillers in the tablets can block small blood vessels. Stimulants have been abused for both “performance enhancement” and recreational purposes (i.e., to get high).
What Adverse Effects Can Be Associated with Stimulant Abuse?
The consequences of stimulant abuse can be extremely dangerous. Taking high doses of a stimulant can result in an irregular heartbeat, dangerously high body temperatures, and/or the potential for cardiovascular failure or seizures. Taking high doses of some stimulants repeatedly over a short period of time can lead to hostility or feelings of paranoia in some individuals.
Stimulants should not be mixed with antidepressants, which may enhance the effects of a stimulant, or OTC cold medicines containing decongestants, which may cause blood pressure to become dangerously high or lead to irregular heart rhythms.
While most people who take prescription medications use them responsibly, when abused—that is, taken by someone other than the patient for whom the medication was prescribed, or taken in a manner or dosage other than what was prescribed—prescription medications can produce serious adverse health effects and can lead to drug addiction.
Patients, healthcare professionals, and pharmacists all have roles in preventing the abuse of and addiction to prescription medications. For example, patients should follow the directions for use carefully, learn what effects and side effects the medication could have, and inform their doctor/pharmacist whether they are taking other medications [including over-the-counter (OTC) medications or health supplements], since these could potentially interact with the prescribed medication.
The patient should read all information provided by the pharmacist. Physicians and other healthcare providers should screen for past or current substance abuse in the patient during routine examination, including asking questions about what other medications the patient is taking and why. Providers should note any rapid increases in the amount of a medication needed or frequent requests for refills before the quantity prescribed should have been finished, as these may be indicators of abuse.
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Is It Dangerous To Mix Depressants With Other Drugs?
Drug abuse is a vicious cycle. Users often take drugs to counter the effect of other drugs they are taking. But, taken in combination with alcohol or other drugs, depressants can kill. Because of their anti-depressant effects, cocaine users take depressants to reduce the depression at the end of a binge. Drug users commonly are cross-addicted. Alcoholics use depressants to reduce the withdrawal from alcohol. Alcoholics also use depressants to become intoxicated, without the associated odor of alcohol. Mixing depressants and alcohol can depress the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, often with deadly consequences. Because knowledge of this dangerous drug interaction is common, many people attempt suicide by taking high doses of depressants with alcohol. Prescription drug abuse, such as Xanax or Oxycontin abuse, can be deadly.
