Prescription drug addictions in the United States have been ballooning at an alarming rate. In the last decade, hospitalizations and death from prescription drug use has increased exponentially. More high school students reported using prescription tranquilizers and narcotic opioids than heroin and cocaine combined. Surveys asking high school age teenagers where they obtain prescriptions pills revealed that relatively few buy from dealers or people with whom they are unacquainted. Many have their own prescriptions, or receive or steal them from family and friends, who also have legitimate prescriptions. The number of prescriptions for potentially addicting pain medications such as OxyContin, Vicodin, and Percocet was more than 200 million in 2010 alone.
Part of the prescription drug addiction problem is that doctors themselves have not done much study into pain management. It has been found that in some schools, students of veterinary medicine spend more time learning pain control than the medical students do. This has lead to more doctors prescribing higher and higher doses for longer periods, while there is no evidence showing that use of opiod pain medication for longer than four months actually helps treat chronic pain. On the contrary, evidence has shown higher doses do raise the risk of addiction, overdose, and death.
An additional problem to the prescription drug issue is doctors cashing in on the rise of the number of pill addicted people. Many have turned to running ‘pill mills’ as they are called, writing prescriptions for extremely high counts of pills, exorbitant amounts of refills, and also for people who have no medical need for them – only to resell the pills for profit on the street, just like a dealer who deals in illicit street drugs. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), in 2011 alone, has arrested and charged over 25 people (including several doctors and other medical personnel) and seized millions of dollars for distribution of narcotics through ‘pill mills’. The problem has become so widespread that the President Barack Obama himself released a plan of action to reduce prescription pill trafficking and abuse.
Prescription drug addiction is often a hard addiction to break. Whether it is benzodiazepines (Xanax), narcotic opiods (OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin), or any other prescription medication, the withdrawal symptoms are unpleasant and sometimes painful, and can trap a user in a cycle of addiction just as any illicit street substance does. In order to break the cycle of addiction, a person needs to find a rehabilitation program that works, such as the Freedom Center. They are a drug free facility, meaning no narcotics or other drugs are used during the course of the program, even during withdrawal. If a person is addicted to benzodiazepines or alcohol, which can carry with them sometimes lethal withdrawal symptoms, they are medically detoxified and then enter into the program. The avoidance of using drugs in favor of a holistic treatment, featuring proper nutrition and a vitamin regimen, allows the Freedom Center to illustrate to people achieving a completely drug free life is possible, even from prescription narcotics. The Freedom Center is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and can be reached at 1-877-362-9682.
