A Prescribed Epidemic

I grew up in a small town near the Utah/Idaho border called Fielding. The small town lifestyle often includes knowing a lot about the people around you and after being there for 18 years, there are few unfamiliar faces. I had a good friend in the next town over that I did many things with throughout high school. We played baseball together and we had the opportunity to play ball all over the country. Both of our families appeared 100 percent normal to most people from the outside and our families became quite close over the years. My friend’s parents ran a sod farm that provided grass implants to many of the surrounding areas and they did very well. One day, after I had known this family for some time, I learned a very sad and resounding story about the family that I never would have thought possible. As with many of the people in our town, we affiliated with the predominant LDS church and I always thought everyone in this family was just the same old friendly do-gooders that was so common in the area. In fact, I knew for a fact that the father in the family had been a bishop in the local ward. The story starts with his father whose name was Dee. As previously mentioned, he was in charge of a sod farm and was a hardworking self-made man. However, I learned that he had stepped down from running the farm and had begun work at an addiction treatment center for our local valley. It wasn’t long after that I heard that he had actually been arrested a couple of years previously while he was still a bishop in the church. In fact, he was taken away and put in handcuffs during the Sunday meetings that he was conducting. It was then I learned that Dee was suspected of breaking into numerous houses throughout his neighborhood trying to get his hands on a prescription drug that we know so well: Oxycodone. Eventually, enough evidence came about for there to be a warrant for his arrest. As you would expect, this type of news is unexpected and quite alarming to hear especially when you have grown close to someone. Dee was not a bad person by any means. I later learned that he initially injured himself when a ladder slipped out from underneath him while working on the roof of his house. His back pain would not go away and he went to a doctor who prescribed the opioid Oxycodone to him. When the pain didn’t go away he went back to get more of the drug until the doctor would no longer give him any. He then resorted to stalking the pharmacy to learn what people might have the drugs he needed and then blatantly robbing them of the drugs when he got the chance. 

            This is only one story in a larger problem that is in our hands today. Thankfully, Dee is back to living a normal life and is trying to work with others who have had similar problems. He has been working at the addiction center for quite some time and from what I hear he is a fantastic resource for the center. However, it seems like more and more of the stories that are similar to Dee’s are not ending with a happily ever after. According to the CDC, 46 people die from prescription painkiller overdoses each day. Additionally, in 2012, health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers. That’s enough for each citizen in the United States to have their own bottle of pills (Opioid Painkiller Prescribing 2014). Even more alarming, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimated that 7 percent of patients who are prescribed narcotics or opioids designed to treat all kind of pain become addicted to them—that amounts to 2 percent or 4.7 million people who are addicted to some kind of opioid throughout the United States (Yoder 2015).

These statistics get even scarier when we start to include heroin use in the mix. Heroin is also an opioid, but it is sold on the street and is highly illegal to possess or sell. In the past decade, heroin use has increased 300 percent in the United States and the largest single increase has been in the age 19 to 25 demographic of the population. Prescription drug users are also 40 times more likely to use heroin as well (Todays Heroin Epidemic 2015). If a prescription user is unable to get a new prescription from their doctor prescribed they often turn to the cheaper, illegal, and even more deadly heroin to live out their addiction. All opioids have the property that eventually induces a tolerance in the user over time which is the cause to most of the unintentional overdoses that we hear of all the time.  I had a cousin who had this very thing happen to him. He got into hard drugs at an early age, but was able to rehab and get clean for around a year. He had improved and had started a family when he relapsed, but when he took the same dosage that he had been taking before he got clean his body couldn’t take it and he died leaving two kids behind. His body no longer had the tolerance that it had when he was a regular user. Heroin is becoming more and more available to addicts as well. Since there has been a growing number of reports detailing prescription drug abuse, some measures have been taken to limit the number or type of prescriptions that a physician can give to patients. However, that hasn’t done anything to stop the amount of people getting addicted to the drugs. As the drugs become harder to get, the illegal use of heroin becomes more of a viable option. There is compiling evidence to support that heroin is slowly growing in popularity as opioids are slowly getting harder to get (America’s Addiction to Opioids: Heroin and Prescription Drug Use 2015).

The science behind drug abuse and addiction is heavily studied, but rarely well understood by the common person. Many experts suggest that a person’s vulnerability is based largely around their genes. Other factors include external environmental factors or certain disorders. The important fact to me though is realizing that this problem is not always something that is controlled. Sure, the initial choice to use a drug is usually a choice (or a choice given by a medical professional), but we really need to start looking at drug addiction as a full scale disease that we need to treat in a variety of ways. Addiction, according to the NIDA is defined as a chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences (Drug Abuse and Addiction 2014). All synthetic drugs either trick the brain into believing that they are a natural neurotransmitter (opioids) or cause an abnormally large amount of the neurotransmitter to be released (amphetamines). All of them create a euphoric effect that make our brain think that a life sustaining activity is occurring. Since our natural instinct is to sustain our lives, the brain wants to keep doing the activities that give it pleasure. Dopamine, the most common chemical associated with drug addiction, is released in extremely high concentrations when drugs are used. While it is natural in our bodies, when released due to drug use, as much as 10 times the amount is released when compared to other natural releases that occur during things like eating, sex, or physical activities (Drug Abuse and Addiction 2014). After a while the user needs the drug just to feel normal and they become a slave to the drug.

After reading all these statistics coupled with my own real world experiences, I have to wonder what more can we do to help prevent these types of things. While unfortunately there is no perfect solution, I believe that there are several things that can take place that will help reduce the plague that opioid use has become throughout the world. First and foremost, we need to limit the amount of prescriptions that are given out by doctors. This is not to say that doctors are all irresponsibly prescribing medications, but I definitely believe that many prescriptions are given in order to appease both the patient and to get the next customer in the door as soon as possible. If someone is in pain and an alternative option is available, then the alternative should always be first. The healthcare system needs to realize that there are other options available in this modern age. For example: utilize chiropractors, free physical therapists from the restraints of secondary care, promote acupuncture, realize that naturopathic doctors have a place in the healthcare system. If insurance would cover more alternative medical techniques, people would use these other options more. The fact is there are many different ways to treat pain, but insurance companies won’t cover anything except prescription drugs.

Secondly, the big pharmaceutical companies are happy to allow that to keep happening since their pockets remain full, but they too need to be held responsible for the damage they might be causing. The pharmacy industry is full of shady characters who will do whatever they can to sell their products. The most famous example of this in terms of opioids was the case in 2007 in which the company Purdue Pharma was sued for $600 million dollars for misleading authorities, doctors, and customers about the addictive nature of their drug OxyContin. They were guilty of promoting the drug to doctors while misleading them on the signs of drug addiction (Meier 2007). I know how rigorous the testing process is to get drugs from the laboratory to the consumer are, but there needs to some way to make the manufacturing companies more responsible. I’ve never understood why big pharmacy companies are allowed to advertise their products as freely as they do. I think it’s a big reason that our society is getting so comfortable with prescription drugs in the first place. They hear an ad on TV that claims to cure some disease just by popping a pill and they think that any disease can be cured that way. Additionally, companies often have the audacity to tell consumers through advertisements to recommend certain drugs to their doctor. I might be crazy, but shouldn’t it be the other way around?

The final, and likely most beneficial solution to the opioid epidemic, is to be release medical marijuana from its current state of legislation. We need to remove the stigma that has been placed on this drug over the years and tap into the potential that it has. While the jury might still be out on whether recreational marijuana is a smart go, the utility for the drug to help with the opioid epidemic is clear.  The momentum in favor of using marijuana as a pain treatment is finally starting to gain a little steam this year as a group in Maine has asked legislatures to consider marijuana as a suitable treatment for pain (Graham 2016). Other studies have come out detailing the facts that states that have voted to loosen laws on marijuana already see 25 percent decreases in opioid overdoses since the drug was decriminalized (Sifferlin 2016). The evidence is building as research has seen uses for cannabis in treating the symptoms of ailments such as Crohns disease, nausea from cancer, hypertension, sleep apnea, and a growing list of ailments (Illnesses Treatable with Marijuana 2016). On top of all of the medical benefits, there are additional reasons to rethink how marijuana is legislated. The cost of opioid abuse costs an estimated $75 billion dollars each year in the United States alone (Sifferlin 2016).  Imagine eliminating 25 percent of that and having that money repurposed somewhere else in our economy. The money that we could be making from marijuana brings about a completely different argument in this discussion. If we were to bring in the money that recreational use of marijuana would bring into our country, there would be a multitude of reasons to loosen laws as well. We will see what happens in the near future, but I hope that future legislation allows medical marijuana to become a mainstream thing. To me, it’s a no brainer to make use of a much less harmful substance that can do a lot of good.

Action starts with education and I feel like more people need to be aware about what is going on with opioid abuse in our country.  It seems like most people I know have a story similar to my stories of Dee and my cousin. I hope that we can raise awareness about the subject and keep young people from becoming addicted to hard drugs that are legally prescribed to them. I hope that we can find more uses for alternative medicine in our healthcare system and see that insurance companies cover them. This way the alternative methods can be used more frequently and without as many worries about the costs of such treatments. Pharmaceutical companies should also take part in the responsibility and not try to push addictive drugs into the mainstream so much. They will make enough money as it is and don’t need to create addicts out of their consumers to make a profit. While the full extent of the health benefits is being studied, I hope that everyone can give more thought to the uses of medical marijuana practice in our country as well. A lot of damage has already been done because of prescription drug abuse and I hope to see the problem reduced sometime in the near future.

Works Cited

"America's Addiction to Opioids: Heroin and Prescription Drug Abuse." National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). N.p., 14 May 2014. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

"Drug Abuse and Addiction." National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.

Graham, Gilliam. "Advocates Ask Maine Regulators to Consider Marijuana to Treat Opioid Addiction - The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram." The Portland Press Herald Maine Sunday Telegram Advocates Ask Maine Regulators to Consider Marijuana to Treat Opioid Addiction Comments. N.p., 20 Apr. 2016. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.

"Illnesses Treatable With Medical Cannabis." United Patients Group. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

Meier, Barbara. "In Guilty Plea, OxyContin Maker to Pay $600 Million." New York Times. N.p., 10 May 2007. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

"Opioid Painkiller Prescribing." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 01 July 2014. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Sifferlin, Alexandra. "Can Medical Marijuana Help End the Opioid Epidemic?" Time. Time, 28 July 2016. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.

"Today’s Heroin Epidemic." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 07 July 2015. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Yoder, Written By Robert. "Adults Addicted to Painkillers." The Palm Beach Institute. N.p., 02 Nov. 2015. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.