Published On: Sun, Feb 3rd, 2019

Risks posed by prescription drugs

Biology is one of the fields where new discoveries occur every day. Advances in medicine now enable us to treat conditions that would have been lethal a few decades ago, efficiently manage incurable diseases with care for a patient’s comfort and increase life expectancy. Medications are also far more available to the public now, allowing anyone to obtain hundreds of over-the-counter medicines without a prescription.

When it comes to prescription drugs, however, immense benefits come in a pair with certain hazards. The whitesands drug rehab points out that the potency and side effects of such drugs can be incredibly harmful to your health, so medical supervision is required during the course of treatment. Particularly dangerous prescription medications fall into three categories: depressants, stimulants and pain relievers. When used correctly, they are beneficial to your mind and body, but higher doses or prolonged exposure can cause effects, resembling those of illicit drugs, and eventually lead to addiction.

Misuse or overdose of certain prescription drugs can result in behavioral changes, cravings for the drug, impulsive use and mild to severe withdrawal symptoms. A person might start taking the drugs for recreational purposes or adopt them as a means to manage stress and daily troubles. In some cases, treatment at a drug rehabilitation center (you could look here) is required to help the patient overcome the addiction.

Why are prescription drugs addictive?

Pain relievers

Pain medications rely on opioids to reduce the intensity of pain. Vicodin, OxyContin, Kadian, and codeine-containing drugs all work on the same principles, utilizing the effects of various opioid substances.

Opioids attach to specific receptors in the spinal cord and other organs in the body and change the way pain signals are treated by the brain. A blog on www.positiverecovery.com says, they also influence the areas that control emotion and hence can affect the way a person perceives pain. Opioids tend to produce constipation, nausea, and confusion in higher doses, as well as cause depression of the respiratory system that can even lead to death.

The addictive properties of opioids come from their ability to induce the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter, responsible for the feelings of pleasure and euphoria. Dopamine is a key element in the brain’s reward system. It serves to identify beneficial behaviors and reinforce the habits, associated with them. When dopamine release is triggered artificially, the brain treats the drug as a source of positive influence and makes the user crave higher and higher doses.

Sedatives and tranquilizers

Sedatives work through depressing the central nervous system and thereby slowing brain activity. They increase the production of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA. High levels of GABA inhibit brain activity and make a person feel calm or drowsy, decrease alertness and reduce stress. CNS depressants can be of three types.

Benzodiazepines include such drugs as Valium and Xanax and are prescribed to treat short-term sleep disorders, anxiety, and panic attacks. Long-term treatment is approached with caution since benzodiazepines have a high potential for causing physical dependence and addiction.

Non-benzodiazepine drugs act virtually in the same way as benzodiazepines, binding to the same receptors in the brain, but have fewer adverse effects and are less addictive. Ambien, Lunesta, and Sonata are examples of non-benzodiazepine sleep medications.

Finally, there are barbiturates. Barbiturates are mainly used in surgical procedures and are rarely administered to treat sleep disorders or anxiety because of their high risk of overdose. In some cases, barbiturate medications like Mebaral and Nembutal may be used to treat seizure disorders.

Stimulants

Unlike CNS depressants, stimulants increase alertness and attention. Physically, they elevate blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. Psychologically, they make you feel more confident, energetic and aware of your surroundings. Stimulants now are rarely prescribed due to their high potential for abuse and addiction and are only used to treat few conditions like ADHD and narcolepsy. Stimulants also might be used in severe cases of depression if a patient doesn’t show improvement on other medications.

Similarly to opioids, stimulants enhance the production of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. Norepinephrine is a stress hormone that mainly aims to mobilize the body in the event of danger. It promotes an increase in blood pressure and glucose, constricts blood vessels and facilitates opening of breathing passages. In addition to that, dopamine induces euphoria when a stimulant drug is abused.

An overdose of stimulants is a serious issue that can lead to high body temperature and cardiovascular failure. Also, withdrawal symptoms can be quite severe. Abrupt quitting might result in hostility, depression, intense fatigue, and even paranoia or psychosis. Therefore, if you want to interrupt the treatment or stop abusing stimulants, you should consult with one of the specialized addiction treatment centers or your physician.

How to prevent and treat prescription drug abuse?

Prescription drug abuse is a serious issue that frequently requires enrollment in drug rehabilitation programs to overcome, yet the majority of people don’t treat it with much concern. In fact, as many as 52 million people have misused prescription drugs at some point in their lives. It accounts for 20% of the US population. The alarming tendency is caused by several factors.

First of all, prescription medicines are relatively easy to obtain. It makes them particularly appealing to teenagers and young adults who commonly steal drugs from their parents’ medicine cabinets. Reasons for this behavior vary from curiosity and peer pressure to an inability to cope with certain mental illnesses like anxiety and depression through self-medication.

Secondly, it’s necessary to fight the lack of awareness about the consequence of addiction by educating the population and debunk a myth about the harmless nature of medications. It’s important that schools, colleges, state and private organizations include prescription drug addiction in their anti-drug campaigns to spread the knowledge about its detrimental impacts.

In case a person is already addicted, drug rehab centers offer the most straightforward and reliable way out. They combine cognitive behavioral therapy and medically assisted detox to help patients overcome their addiction, understand what led to it and stay clean from there on. Another advantage of rehab is a vast variety of treatment options. There are drug rehab facilities for teens and families, centers for women and men only, inpatient and outpatient rehab, all of which are prepared to deal with specific issues, commonly shared by certain groups of people.

Supervised rehabilitation is always a better option than attempting to quit using on your own. Although it may be scary to approach a health professional on such issue, rehab allows you to tackle the fundamental cause of the addiction. Along with attending to your body and helping you learn correct coping mechanisms to reduce the chances of relapse, it directs you towards a healthy, drug-free and more balanced life.

About the author:

Thanush Poulsen is a Danish columnist who focuses on mental conditions, co-relater/co-occurring disorders, and their treatment.

About the Author

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