Slashdot Mirror
Most Teens Who Abuse Opioids First Got Them From a Doctor (livescience.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Live Science: Most American teenagers who abuse opioid drugs first received the drugs from a doctor, a new study finds. Researchers looked at trends in the use of prescription opioids among U.S. adolescents from 1976 to 2015. They found a strong correlation between teens' taking the drugs for medical reasons and then later taking them for "non-medical" reasons, or in other words, abusing them, according to the study published today (March 20) in the journal Pediatrics. In 2015, the the most recent year of the study, 8 percent of adolescents reported abusing prescription opioids, and the majority of them had been prescribed opioids previously, the researchers found. The U.S. consumes about 80 percent of the world's prescription opioid supply. There has been consistent growth in the number of prescriptions written for opioids in the U.S., rising from 76 million prescriptions in 1991 to 207 million in 2013, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. However, the new study revealed that among teens, both medical and non-medical use of opioid medications has declined in recent years, starting in 2013. The decline may be due to careful prescribing practices, Sean McCabe, a research professor at the University of Michigan, said. There are several medical procedures that teens may undergo for which opioids are recommended for pain management. But doctors can be careful about the amount of these drugs they prescribe, and limit refills. Parents can make sure that any leftover pills are discarded. Another report was published today in the journal Pediatrics that analyzed data from the National Poison Data System. It found that of all 188,468 prescription opioid exposures reported for youth under 20 years old between 2000 and 2015, nearly all the exposures occurred at a home and were most common among children under 5, accounting for six of every 10 cases. According to NPR, those children were able to get their hands on the medication because it was improperly stored or was in a purse.
No, it's actually a medical condition. Opiate withdrawal is not just a lack of feeling good. Addiction can happen even when the drugs are taken exactly as prescribed. Sometimes even that significant drawback is justified by the amount of pain the person would otherwise be in.
If the DEA would quit practicing medicine without a license it would be a solvable medical problem rather than a legal issue.
No, it's actually a medical condition. Opiate withdrawal is not just a lack of feeling good. Addiction can happen even when the drugs are taken exactly as prescribed. Sometimes even that significant drawback is justified by the amount of pain the person would otherwise be in.
I was prescribed opiates for pain after I had spinal surgery on c4-c6 in my neck. I was on them for months. The haze they produced meant I didn't really care about anything at all. This was not normal. It began to dawn on me that I was dependent on these drugs. I posted about the the withdrawal symptoms of opiates while I was going through the withdrawals.
I discussed this again with the doctor who confirmed I had been on them long enough to develop an opiate dependence. I can tell you what it feels like to be a junkie despite the fact that I have a completely different set of behaviors to draw on and nothing to reinforce an addictive behavior like that.
You feel confident, nothing really bothers you, but it's a false result of being detached from your pain and all of your emotions, which mean you come off as a stable balanced person. However you have very little empathy and you are truly apathetic. I found it to be an ugly sensation. Disconnected, I didn't care about anything.
When you think about it to be disconnected from pain also means to be disconnected from joy, from people. Next time you are in pain ask yourself how real it is. No sane person has that discussion with someone in pain. Opiates just make the pain and everything else, not real. So I would argue now that pain and joy are more real than materialistic concerns. That the connections in life, pain and joy are perhaps the only real things we have. My experiences with opiates were the more you take the less real you are.
If the DEA would quit practicing medicine without a license it would be a solvable medical problem rather than a legal issue.
True that.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Addiction isn't a disease. It is a choice.
Stop being an idiot. Break your back in two places, go on tramadol for 5+ years along with a muscle relaxant and then come back and tell me how you live your life. Sometimes, addiction isn't just to "feel good" it's also due to circumstances beyond your control. I couldn't live the life I do without pain killers, I'm physically addicted to it. My choices are: No pain killers and live a life of incredible pain, if I didn't decide just to end it all. Or pain killers and being addicted to them until I drop dead.
If you're popping pills to "feel good" you've got a problem. The only difference between a junkie looking for the next hit and me grabbing my next pill is the life we lead.
Om, nomnomnom...
What? If you had actually read my post rthrough you'd have noticed I did no such thing but specifically pointed out that both the left and the right have been by and large wrong in their approach.
The right is wrong in saying it's all about the individual. But the left is also wrong in saying it's nothing but chemicals and can be handled with medicine alone. That was the whole point of my post, and instead of bothering to read it you stopped after 4 sentences just to rave at me for essentially agreeing with you,
Ironically enough, this is just what you yourself did by not reading through the argument that was presented.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead