Back Pain: Medication and Addiction
There are risks involved with prescription drug addiction, specifically narcotic painkillers. In most cases, the benefits of these medications outweigh the risks.
In the last few years, everyone's heard about the apparent
epidemic of prescription drug addiction, especially to narcotic painkillers. We
see human-interest stories on the news about regular folks getting hooked on
OxyContin or Vicodin. Every few months, it seems, we get another news release
from a new celebrity confessing to an addiction. The reports may give you the
impression that the lure of these drugs is irresistible, that we're all just a
few pills away from addiction.
This leaves many people with chronic back pain -- and often
their doctors -- stuck in the middle. On the one hand, they're afraid of the
risks of addiction that come with powerful painkillers. On the other, they're
suffering from severe and debilitating pain and need some kind of help.
But are the risks of prescription drug addiction really as
great as we think?
"There's this buzz that these painkillers are demon drugs
being marketed to unsuspecting grandmas," says Karen Miotto, MD, an
addiction psychiatrist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. "But that's
not the case."
There's no doubt that prescription drug addiction can be
devastating and destroy lives. But for many experts, the more widespread public
health issue is that people in desperate and debilitating pain aren't getting
the painkillers they need because of inflated fears of addiction. While opioid
painkillers -- like OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin -- have risks, they're
often outweighed by the benefits, experts say.
How Big Is the Addiction Problem?
Prescription drug addiction is a growing problem. According to
the Office of National Drug Policy, emergency room visits resulting from the
abuse of painkillers alone has gone up 163% since 1995. There are three main
classes of prescriptions drugs that are abused: opioid narcotics used to treat
pain, depressants used to treat anxiety, and stimulants used to treat
conditions like ADHD and obesity.
But those numbers may not be as meaningful they appear, says
Jim Zacny, PhD, a professor in the department of anesthesia and critical care
at the University of Chicago. More people are abusing the drugs because more
people are receiving prescriptions for them. So while there has been a growth
in the number of abusers, there has been a much greater rise in the number of
people who are using these medications safely and benefiting from them.