Pain Killer Addiction | Opiod Medication Addiction
Is your loved one addicted to pain medications like Vicodin, Oxycontin, Morphine, Fentantyl, Dilaudid, etc? This is an exceptionally difficult class of medications to become liberated from, but we are particularly adept within bringing about permanent sobriety from just such medications without clients addicted to them.
Your loved one’s addiction to these medications constitutes a sadly common occurrence these days in the United States, as the prescription of these medications has been steadily increasing over the past few decades. As our population ages, the need for more and more potent pain killing medications becomes necessary and the medical specialty of pain management has grown accordingly. That said, as you are well aware, a very large percentage of this medication prescribed for legitimate medical need actually finds its way into the hands of recreational users.
We do, however, recognize that it is quite likely that your loved one initially began using these medications for just such a very real and painful medical need. The problem, however, is that while these pain medications are particularly good at killing pain, they are also seemingly even better at addicting users of such medications to the euphoric feelings associated with them. In other words, your loved one very well may have begun taking Oxycontin to control their pain, but after a period of time it probably became obvious to you that it went beyond merely being a tool for pain management and much more of a daily obsession; so much so it may not even be altogether clear as to whether or not your loved one still has legitimate pain or pain imagined in order to perpetuate the cycle of addiction. Determining this will be our job, but we will be very clear that we have no intention of putting our clients through unnecessary pain. We will work closely with their pain management doctor to effectively control their pain while dealing with their addiction.
It is quite likely that your loved one has a liver that is presently in danger, as we see a number of clients present to our facility with astronomically high liver values due to the use of opiod medications. The reason for this is that those pain medications that are actually easier to obtain generally contain a high amount of Acetaminophen (Tylenol) which is particularly harmful to a persons liver. In fact, it is debatable whether or not a healthy opiod pain medication addiction or drinking a liter of vodka a day is actually worse for your loved one’s liver. That said, we have found the liver to be an amazingly resilient organ which most often returns to full capacity after a period of sustained sobriety.
We would like to also strongly warn you with regards to the following and we hope we are not coming off as too alarmist in so doing, but this is a very real and prevalent phenomena we have seen within those opiod pain medication addicts we treat. But in both the recreational users and the pain management patients we treat, a high number of them eventually opt to utilize heroin since it is so chemically similar to pain medications and it is often cheaper and more widely available. This is not a far-fetched scenario, as we have seen a number of very upstanding individuals who began taking vicodin to control back pain who ended up injecting heroin within a few years. This is just the sad reality of the progressive nature of addiction and your loved one always faces the very real risk of the ever-progressing nature of their disease.
In recent years, a class of medications has gained prominence in treating the withdrawal associated with addiction to opiod pain medications. This is called “Buprenorphine” (brand name Suboxone, Subutex, Buprenenx, Temgesic, etc.) and your loved one has almost surely heard of these medications before. They are basically weaker opiods that allow for a less traumatic withdrawal process for the addict and we view such medications to be a viable option as a short-term detox medication. We do not condone the long-term use of these medications as any sort of real solution to the problem of addiction (there are some exceptions with chronic pain patients who might need buprenorphine to control their pain still).
Your loved overcoming their addiction to pain medication is going to be an enormous uphill battle for them; quite likely the most dificult thing they are going to ever have to do. Luckily, we are here to help them in their journey and we can use our years of experience in combating pain killer addiction to keep them on the path of recovery, focused on health and happiness.
If you would like to speak with someone regarding your loved one’s pain killer addiction, then feel free to call us whenever at 1-888-U-GET-WELL.
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