Attention getter: As quoted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an average of three Oregonians dies every week from prescription opioid overdose, and many more develop opioid use disorder.
Introduction of topic:
Credibility and relevance: I am a nursing student and have done adequate research and provided sources and have shown my credible knowledge on the subject. One example being:
Preview statement: In order to understand why opioids are so addictive, we need to know what they are, how they react in our body, their history and why they are prescribed.
Transition statement: To start with, I will briefly explain four categories of opioids and how they are made.
II. Body
A. Opioids, both natural and synthetic, are a class of drugs
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that provide severe pain relief and intended to treat moderate to post-surgical, a severe injury, or for cancer treatment. 1. Endogenous opioids occur naturally in the body and they are called endorphins. 2. Illegal opioids are made from a natural substance extracted from the seed pod of the Asian opium poppy plant and their street names are Morphine, Codeine and Heroin. 3. Legal pain prescriptions are semi-synthetic, which means they are partly natural and partly made in the lab, and partly from the poppy plant, and you may be familiar with oxycodone (OxyContin®), hydrocodone (Vicodin®) if you had your wisdom teeth out. 4. Fentanyl, an example of a synthetic drugs are made 100% in the lab are the 50-100 times stronger, which celebrities such as high the musician Prince, Chris Farley from SNL, cancer sufferer Sigmund Freud and the Joker, Heath Ledger, all dies from in overdoses. Transition: So where did opiates originate? B. History has shown the medicinal properties of Opioids have been used and misused since the beginning of time. 1. According to a timeline that The Atlantic published, sponsored by Purdue university, the opium poppy was known as “Joy Plant” was discovered by the Sumerians 3400 B.C. a. Hippocrates, “the father of medicine” used it in treating internal diseases and epidemics around 460-357 B.C. b. In 1527, Paracelsus, “the father of toxicology” used an opium concoction called laudanum, meaning “to praise”, and it remains available today by prescription in the U.S. c.
In 1938, The opium was still being used by physicians in the form of morphine.
d. In the 1990’s opioids became extended release forms and was also being used for cancer patients.
e. By the year 2000 opioid medicine containing oxycodone etc., are being abused and misused and more than doubled in 10 years’ time.
f. From 2010 forward, The Food and Drug Administration has added product formulations that have deterring properties for abuse plus have supported education on the precise dosing and usage.
Transition statement: Finally, I will explain the way opioids produce a euphoric feeling that tricks our body into a temporary pleasure.
C. Opioids target the brain's reward system and reduces the perception of pain.
1. The Reward System controls pleasure, and floods the neural circuit with the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is the central chemical in your brain.
2. Dopamine sends signals to other nerve cells in the brain, which regulates movement, motivation, emotion, and feelings of pleasure.
3. The body does makes some opiate-like molecules that block pain slows down breathing, which has an overall calming and anti-depressing effect for normal
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pain. 4. An opioid can mimic and replace the body’s naturally occurring opiate molecules in the brain’s pleasure and non-pleasure receptors, which depress intense pain and produce a euphoric effect which causes a person to seek out again and again. Transition: Opioids are used in hospitals, prescribed by physicians, but misused by when taken without a doctor’s supervision.
D. Opioids are used in the medical necessity, physical dependence, addiction, and recovery.
1. Hospitals may use them for pain management for trauma-related injuries, cancer or post-surgery, and The Premier Safety Institute states that chronic pain is relieved using opioids on a short-term basis.
2. Stat News states that physical dependence to opioids means that the body relies on an external source of opioids to prevent withdrawal, and treatment is predictable, and can be easily managed with medication, resulting with a slow taper-off of the opioid.
3. Stat also says that using opioids for just FIVE days can end up as long-term dependence, and classifies this as a disease, because it alters brain biology and produces withdrawal symptoms such as aches and pains, nausea, and tremors.
4. The National Alliance says that the recovery process may help reverse, some of these brain changes, but it requires therapy to replace the addictive behaviors with healthy alternative behaviors.
III.
Conclusion Transition to conclusion and summary of importance: Since the beginning of time, Opioids have been depressants that mimic dopamine and can cause addiction. Review statement: Opioids are depressants that mimic dopamine and can cause addiction. Closing statement: “The results from the 2015 National Survey on Drug and Health state that close to 19 million individuals, 12 years and older, misused prescription pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants, and sedatives—collectively referred to as psychotherapeutic drugs—in the past year.” Opioid use leaves us feeling an extreme euphoric high, and then a return to normal. After continued use, our brain adapts, stops producing natural opiate-molecules, and the opioids now only brings one to a high that feels like the old “normal”, and a low that makes you feel depressed and anxious. To avoid this horrible feeling, one must continue to take them at higher levels to feel “normal” again. This is the never-ending negative feedback circle of addiction.
The documentary states that over 27,000 deaths a year are due to overdose from heroin and other opioids. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015 prescription pain relievers account for 20,101 overdose deaths, and 12,990 overdose deaths are related to heroin (Rudd et al., 2010-2015). The documentary’s investigation gives the history of how the heroin epidemic started, with a great focus on the hospice movement. We are presented with the idea that once someone is addicted to painkillers, the difficulty in obtaining the drug over a long period of time becomes too expensive and too difficult. This often leads people to use heroin. This idea is true as a 2014 survey found that 94% of respondents who were being treated for opioid addiction said they chose to use heroin because prescription opioids were “more expensive and harder to obtain (Cicero et al., 2014).” Four in five heroin users actually started out using prescription painkillers (Johns, 2013). This correlation between heroin and prescription painkiller use supports the idea presented in the documentary that “prescription opiates are heroin prep school.”
Almost one hundred years ago, prescription drugs like morphine were available at almost any general store. Women carried bottles of very addictive potent opiate based pain killers in their purse. Many individuals like Edgar Allen Poe died from such addictions. Since that time through various federal, state and local laws, drugs like morphine are now prescription drugs; however, this has not stopped the addiction to opiate based pain killers. Today’s society combats an ever increasing number of very deadly addictive drugs from designer drugs to narcotics to the less potent but equally destructive alcohol and marijuana. With all of these new and old drugs going in and out of vogue with addicts, it appears that the increase of misuse and abuse is founded greater in the prescription opiate based painkillers.
Opioid’s chemical composition consist of many highly addictive substances which cause the human body to become quickly tolerant. Many opioid users become addictive to the substance because the doctors have been over prescribing. “In the United States, there were 14,800 annual prescribed opioid (PO) deaths in 2008” with the US having less restrictions (Fischer, Benedikt, et al 178). The United States have implemented more regulations so that “high levels of PO-related harms been associated with highly potent oxycodone formulas” will decrease (Fischer, Benedikt, et al 178). With the regulations, it does not change the fact that opioids are is destructive. The regulations assistance by lessening the probability of patients becoming addictive to opioid. There are numerous generations that are effected and harmed by the detrimental effects of opioids on opioid-dependent patients.
Opiates are a class of drugs that are used for chronic pain. Opioids are substances that are used to relieve pain by binding opiate receptors throughout the body, and in the brain. These areas in the brain control pain and also emotions, producing a feeling of excitement or happiness. As the brain gets used to these feelings, and the body builds a tolerance to the opioids, there is a need for more opioids and then the possibility of addiction.
On the typical day, over 90 people will die at the hand of opioid abuse in America alone (National). In fact, as of 2014, nearly 2 million Americans were dependent and abusing opioids. The Opioid Crisis has affected America and its citizens in various ways, including health policy, health care, and the life in populous areas. Due to the mass dependence and mortality, the crisis has become an issue that must be resolved in all aspects.
Every year, 2.6 million people in the United States suffer from opioid abuse and of that 2.6 million, 276,000 are adolescents, and this problem is only escalating. An individual’s physical and emotional health suffers as well as their personal lives as they lose employment, friends, family, and hope. Opioid addiction begins with the addictive aspects of the drug. People easily become hooked on the relieving effects of the opioids and suffer withdrawal symptoms if they stop using the drug completely because their nerve cells become accustomed to the drug and have difficulty functioning without it; yet the addiction to the drug is only one aspect of the complex problem. The stigma about opioid addiction has wide-reaching negative effects as it discourages people with opioid abuse problems from reaching out.
This didn’t last very long considering morphine was found to be much more addictive than alcohol. In the early 1900s, morphine was identified as a controlled substance under the Harrison Act. The Harrison Act was put in place to control morphine by making it only legal for those with a prescription for the drug to carry and use it. It is now considered a Schedule I&II drug, which basically defines the levels of enforcement against the drugs. At the time, morphine was the most commonly abused drug, because of its mind-numbing, and reality shattering capabilities.
Opioids are medications that relieve pain. They reduce the intensity of pain signals reaching the brain and affect those brain areas controlling emotion, which diminishes the effects of a painful stimulus. All stimulants work by increasing
Health Specialist Angela Stander said, “ studies have shown that in as little as seven days you can become physically dependent on them” (Bringhurst). Pain is difficult to measure and patients need to understand and verbalize their symptoms and needs. Doctors also need to be more thorough about the effects and dangers of opioids. They need to spend more time educating patients and they should have more natural and healthy alternatives. Physicians are usually more inclined to increase patients dosage as time goes on and they become more tolerant to what they have (Lockhart, “Utah Opioid Bills”). Patients are taught to trust their doctors so a lot of the times they won’t question things that their doctors say, even if it doesn’t seem right to
The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such. Not to mention the fact that the doctors who prescribe these opioids often tend to misuse them as well. Abusing these prescribed drugs can “destroy dreams and abort great destinies," and end the possibility of the abuser to have a positive impact in the community.
When was Opioids Created? What Era patients first prescribed Opioids? Americas usage with Opioids
Opioids are one of the most common recreational drugs. Some of the most common opioids are heroin, codeine, oxycodone, fentanyl, methadone, and morphine. Their legal uses are for cancer related pain and their recreational use is to produce feelings of euphoria. Opioids produce feelings similar to heroin, which makes opioids a gateway drug to heroin because they are much cheaper. In 2016, 42,000 people lost their lives to opioids and an average of 210 million prescriptions for opioids are written yearly. Women are more likely to have chronic pain, which in turn, makes them more likely to become dependent on opioids. Although forty-nine states have a drug monitoring program, drugs still get into the wrong hands. Opioids have had a huge impact
They’re rarely able to completely stop the pain, but instead patients find themselves cobbling together a mishmash of remedies to carry on with their lives, for which a collection of opioids provide a legitimately important ingredient. Clinical guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been updated to reduce the amount of opioids prescribed for the treatment of chronic pain. The opioid crisis emerged in large part from poor understanding of how to treat chronic pain. Strong research now could help to improve the way pain is managed and encourage the appropriate use of
Although prescribed opioids are intended to reduce and treat pain, it is very much a dangerous drug that is over prescribed and abused. According to research, 99 percent of doctors exceed the recommended amount of prescribed opioids (Mozes, n.d.). The federal recommendation of prescription opioid for doctors to prescribe is a three-day dosage limit (Mozes, n.d.). But as patients continue to complain about their pain, doctors begin to
I am writing to you today to consult you on the increasing percentage of opioid based pain killers prescribed to patients. The prescription of opioid based drugs is effective and work very quickly. The drug was first used in the medical field, “In the sixteenth century when, laudanum, opium prepared in an alcoholic solution, was used as a painkiller” (Lembke, 2018). In the medical field, they have become the status quo for many chronic pain cases and patients going through the numerous months of chemotherapy. Anna Lembke, Md explains in her article that, “chronic opioid therapy benefits some patients with chronic pain” to show that there is a necessity for the prescribing of opioids (2018).