REASONS OUR CLINIC COMBATS DRUG ADDICTION
Opioids have been abused for a long period of time. Opiate usage escalated in the early 1980s, when Big Pharma promoted the treatment of pain without recognizing their abuse capacity. At that time, health organizations and health centers pushed for discomfort control by distributing sketches of facial grimaces portraying discomfort scales to deal with pain accordingly.
The end result was more written prescriptions. That caused the current opioid epidemic; according to the Center For Disease Control, healthcare facilities in the United States see an average of 1,000 clients a day for abuse of prescription opiates (such as methadone, oxycodone and hydrocodone).
Just how much has the death rate increased? Since 1990, more than 200,000 deaths have been attributed to an overdoses from prescription opioids-- at a rate of almost 50 deaths daily.
Recently, awareness by doctors of the current opioid epidemic crisis has shifted the pendulum to the other side, resulting in less prescriptions composed for pain relievers. This has actually led the patient to seek street heroin. Heroin use has increased with changing of the composition of some of the prescription painkillers. Also, the use of heroin has actually increased with the rising cost of hard-to-get prescription painkillers. With intravenous heroin use, the rate of overdose death increased. In the last few years overdose death from heroin has jumped because of lacing heroin with fentanyl-- a surgical anesthetic opiate which is 50 times more potent than heroin.
There are about 180 deaths daily from opioid overdose in the USA, surpassing all other causes of mortality. This number is expected to rise even higher.
Here are some data of the opioid crisis:
Overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in USA.
In 2015: There were 52,000 lethal cases-- including 20,000 due to prescription painkiller overdose deaths and 13,000 fatal heroin home overdoses.
In 2015: There were 21 million substance usage condition cases. Two million cases related to prescription drugs and 600,000 associated to heroin.
From 1999-2008: The rise in deaths from prescription pain relievers and sales of such pills quadrupled. Admissions to medical facilities due to overdose increased sixfold.
In 2012: There were 259 million prescriptions composed for pain reliever medications, which would cover one prescription for each American adult.
In 2014: 94% of users chose heroin over prescription medications due to the fact that pills were more expensive and more difficult to get.
Among heroin users, 23% establish opioid addiction.
These truths and statistics are uneasy due to the fact that of the increasing deaths impacting many households. It must be an obligation and top concern for health care specialists (particularly addiction specialists) to assist treat these reliant patients to prevent more overdoses and deaths.