Someone
asked on my Twitter account, "What happened to 'this will kill you, don't
take it?'" If only it was so easy!
"Just
say no" may work for many of us, but the opioid/heroin epidemic's origins
does not come solely from people who want to get high, according to health
officials and those who study the epidemic.
Many people develop their addiction to opioids from a prescription from
their doctor to relieve pain due to an operation or other reason. And
predicting who will become addicted is not possible. For some, they may take it
and get sick, then avoid it. Others may get hooked in short order. At least one
study says that 1 in 16 people become addicted to opioids. So are we to blame
someone for taking a prescription under a doctor's orders?
Health
officials have been recommending actions to help reduce the epidemic that have
been classified as "harm reduction." Needle exchanges to reduce the
likelihood of diseases such as hepatitis or HIV. Encouraging the distribution
of naloxone to save users from deadly overdoses. Reaching out to homeless
addicts to offer treatment. Each of
these measures try to keep the addicted individual alive until they are ready
for treatment or can be enrolled in a treatment program.
Keeping
someone alive while addicted is one thing. The key is to get the addicted off
of opioids or heroin or better yet to prevent addiction in the first place.
Treatment needs to be expanded and encouraged. Health officials have been
advocating for "medication-assisted treatment" where a medication
such as methadone or suboxone blocks opioids and heroin from receptors in the
brain so that the individual can live a normal, non-addicted life plus
behavioral therapy to help the individual navigate through society. But treatment
is not easy. People may fail many times before coming to grips with their
addiction.
Many
observers urge one further step. That doctors should not prescribe opioids for
pain as much as they do or should not prescribe opioids at all. In the heady
years of opioid prescriptions, doctors were told that they were not addictive
and that they should prescribe 30 to 60 pills per prescription. Those claims
obviously turned out to be wrong. There is some consensus that doctors should
rely on milder pain relievers such as Tylenol or Ibuprofen for most patients.
Are
opioids dangerous? You bet they are. But the fact that not everyone becomes
addicted to them puts them in a nether world. Many prescription medicines
though are dangerous in certain amounts, over an extended period of time or to
certain people. We need to be more careful on how we take opioids. We should
take them under a doctor's supervision. And apparently, more doctors need more
updated education on the benefits and dangers of opioids.
Are
opioids dangerous? The pharmaceutical companies that manufacture opioids
apparently did not think so at one time.
But the lack of understanding, and maybe intentionally overlooking their
danger, as some people allege, has caused much damage to human lives over the
last 20 years or so. That's why the City of Everett, the State of Washington,
and the City of Seattle, as well as others, are suing opioid manufacturers to
recover the costs to their health systems, police and fire agencies, and social
services caused by the opioid epidemic.
But
what can we do? One thing we all can do is to talk to our teens about
prescription drugs. There is a sense by health officials that many teens view
prescription drugs as safe like candy. Let them know that prescription drugs
are not for getting high. They are for helping with medical conditions under
the supervision of a doctor.
No
one action will reduce much less eliminate the opioid epidemic. We all need to
play a part. We all need to find ways to prevent addiction.
Here
is a show that explains the opioid/heroin epidemic,
NPR
The Takeaway:
http://www.wnyc.org/story/addiction-nation-understanding-americas-opioid-crisis
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