Christian recovery centers often admit patients who, to no fault of their own, have become addicted to prescription opiates. May of these Christian drug rehab patients were prescribed pain pills for acute pain issues, such as an injury sustained on the job, or from a minor sports injury.
There are some Christian drug rehab patients, however, that have acquired prescription opiates on the streets. Christian recovery centers understand there is a difference between these two types of addicts. The first type may still require some form of alternative pain treatment after being detoxed completely from prescription opiates. The other type of Christian drug rehab patient probably requires more extensive behavior therapy and possibly a more extended care treatment facility in order to curb his or her addictive behavior patterns.
Regardless of how a person becomes addicted to pain pills, Christian drug rehabs are well aware that the problem of abuse is pervasive and, ultimately, life threatening. For this reason, they attempt to grant a more spiritually centered focus in the addicted person’s lifestyle in order to replace the craving for drugs.
There are over 1500 accidental deaths due to prescription pill overdose in the United States every year. This number rivals that of car accident deaths. Although prescription opiates like Vicodin, Lortab and OxyContin require a prescription, many people can obtain these drugs on the streets and they misuse them, which leads to overdose. This problem has prompted state congressional hearings, which aim to either ban or put restrictions on these prescription pills.
Most of the misused prescription opiates come from pain management clinic prescriptions. The pills are also easy to obtain from some primary care physicians, simply because most pain is self reported by the patient and much of it cannot be tested for by a lab. For a long time, prescription opiates have maintained a good reputation for pain management. Although non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen can be effective for pain, most often high doses are required, which have been linked to liver disease when taken over long periods of time.
Because prescription opiates have not been linked to liver disease, they are more widely prescribed than drugs like ibuprofen. However, even though prescription opiates are highly effective, the problem of prescription pill abuse has overshadowed this fact lately. The Federal government has stepped in to crack down on pain management clinics that make it far too easy to obtain opiates. Many of these so called "pill mills" have been shut down, and several physicians have been indicted for malpractice after prescribing enormous amounts of prescription opiates to patients who were obviously abusing them or in some cases, selling them on the streets to addicts who wound up in a Christian drug rehab.
