Painkiller Addiction

Painkiller addiction is a behavioral phenomenon that refers to the development of a drug addiction in patients that have been under treatment for a disease or disorder that cause persistent pain.

On these patients, the use of certain painkiller medications that contain opium derivatives lead to a physical dependence that may cause pain when the drug is discontinued. This pain and feeling of illness may be even worse than the original pain for which the medication was prescribed.

Causes Of Painkiller Addiction

When a patient suffers from chronic or recurrent episodes of pain, physicians try to relieve it by administering painkiller medications.

Some painkillers contain narcotic elements that effectively ease the pain but have undesired effects in a patient’s brain and nervous system. After some time of regularly taking this medicine, the body of the patient becomes dependant on such drug. This dependence causes the brain to stop the production of endorphins (natural painkillers).

When pain subsides and the painkiller is discontinued, the body reacts to the lack of the substance by showing symptoms of withdrawal. As there are no endorphins present in the body, these symptoms may resemble the intensity and feeling of the original pain, and thus the doctor often prescribes the medication again.

By the time the expert realizes that the actual cause of the pain is the body’s dependence on the substance, the patient may have developed painkiller addiction.

Symptoms Of Painkiller Addiction

The most visible symptom of painkiller addiction is the compulsive desire to take these medications in increasing doses each time. When the substance is discontinued, some other symptoms appear which are called abstinence syndrome, or withdrawal syndrome.

The symptoms of painkiller withdrawal syndrome may vary significantly depending upon the strength of the prescribed medication, the amount of narcotics contained in a single dose and the extent of time during which the drug has been consumed.

Nausea, vomits, an intense feeling of illness, headaches and persistent pain may be symptoms of abstinence syndrome in painkiller addiction.

Treatment Of Painkiller Addiction

Treatment of painkiller addiction usually consists in slowly replacing narcotic painkillers with non-opioid ones. This does not prevent withdrawal syndrome, but may help dealing with its symptoms.

If the original cause of the pain for which painkillers were prescribed is still active, this pain may be worsen for as long as the abstinence syndrome is present, usually decreasing its intensity again once the body starts again producing endorphins and the non-narcotic painkiller has replaced the addictive one.

Prevention Of Painkiller Addiction

As a general rule for preventing painkiller addiction, opium-derived medication should be avoided whenever possible. If they must be prescribed, they should be taken only when told by the physician, and self-medication should be avoided.

The amount of medicines taken should be kept at a minimum if the pain is not intense enough to prevent the patient from having a normal life, and in most cases non-addictive drugs are recommended to deal with hard pain episodes.

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