WHY OUR CENTER BATTLES METHADONE DEPENDENCY
Opioids have been abused for an extended period of time. Opiate usage escalated in the early 1980s, when Big Pharma pushed for the treatment of discomfort without acknowledging their abuse potential. At that time, health companies and hospitals promoted discomfort control by dispersing sketches of facial grimaces illustrating pain scales to treat pain accordingly.
The end outcome was more written prescriptions. That caused the existing opioid epidemic; according to the Center For Disease Control, health centers in the United States see approximately 1,000 patients a day for abuse of prescription opiates (such as methadone, oxycodone and hydrocodone).
How much has the death rate increased? Given that 1990, more than 200,000 deaths have actually been attributed to an overdoses from prescription opioids-- at a rate of nearly 50 deaths daily.
Recently, awareness by physicians of the current opioid epidemic crisis has shifted the pendulum to the opposite, leading to less prescriptions composed for painkillers. This has led the client to look for street heroin. Heroin usage has actually increased with altering of the structure of a few of the prescription pain relievers. Likewise, making use of heroin has increased with the rising expense of hard-to-get prescription pain relievers. With intravenous heroin usage, 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 powerful than heroin.
There are about 180 deaths daily from opioid overdose in the USA, surpassing all other causes of death. This number is expected to increase even higher.
Here are some data of the opioid crisis:
Overdose is the leading cause of unexpected death in USA.
In 2015: There were 52,000 lethal cases-- including 20,000 due to prescription pain reliever overdose deaths and 13,000 review fatal heroin overdoses.
In 2015: There were 21 million compound usage disorder cases. Two million cases related to prescription drugs and 600,000 related to heroin.
From 1999-2008: The rise in deaths from prescription pain relievers and sales of such tablets quadrupled. Admissions to health centers due to overdose increased sixfold.
In 2012: There were 259 million prescriptions written for painkiller medications, which would cover one prescription for each American grownup.
In 2014: 94% of users picked heroin over prescription medications since tablets were more costly and harder to get.
Amongst heroin users, 23% develop opioid addiction.
These truths and stats are worrisome since of the increasing deaths impacting a lot of families. It should be an obligation and leading priority for health care specialists (particularly addiction specialists) to help deal with these dependent patients to prevent more overdoses and deaths.