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We recently spent some time with a young man who was a close friend and fellow opioid user with our son. While he has survived dying from an overdose and has been clean on and off for almost 20 years, he has been on Suboxone for the past nine months, trying once again to be clean after one more cycle of opioid addiction. He has tried many ways to get free of the stranglehold that opioids have on his brain, to no avail. How did this happen?
Our son, like millions of other adolescents, were prescribed opioids for some type of pain: oral surgeries, sports injuries, accidents, etc. John Leif (JL) had his first experience with opioids at 12 when he had teeth extracted before wearing braces. What we didn’t know then (2001) were the facts about opioids and addiction. Why we didn’t know – and most doctors and dentists didn’t either – was due to Purdue Pharma and other drug companies’ propaganda on the safety of oral opioids: “Opioids are not addictive if a person is in pain.” That, of course, is a lie and one they knew perfectly well. The opioid epidemic is the result of their lies.
The more recent information from multiple drug studies is what we wish we would have known 20 years ago: Legitimate use of prescribed opioids before the 12th grade is independently associated with a 33% increase in the risk of future opioid misuse after high school by age 23 compared to those with no history of an opioid prescription. This was among patients with little drug experience and who disapprove of illegal drug use. (1)
Why does an opioid prescription predict future opioid misuse most strongly among individuals with little to no experience with use of illegal drugs – i.e., adolescents? For drug-naïve individuals, an opioid prescription is likely to be their first experience with an addictive substance. Most likely the pain relief is pleasurable, and a safe initial experience with opioids may reduce perceived risk. A pleasurable and safe initial experience with a psychotropic drug is a central factor in theories of who goes on to misuse drugs. (2)
Continue reading “Prescriptions in Adolescence and Future Opioid Misuse”
Opiate Nation 