Why is there an epidemic of prescription painkiller dependency?

In the 04/05/2010 issue of the Daily Herald, there was an article discussing the epidemic of prescription painkiller additions and dependency in the United States.    According to the DEA, these prescription medications cause more drug overdose deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.  Why is this happenning?

Being in the natural health care field, I may look at this problem a little differently that a traditional medical doctor.  Instead of blaming the drug or the overuse of the drug, I think that we need to pay more attention to the reason why patients are being prescribed these medications — pain. 

Pain is a natural and good response from the body to let you know something is wrong and needs your attention.  You feel pain whether you broke your arm, got a paper cut or have too much pressure on your low back joints.  It’s like the “check engine” light on your car’s dashboard.  You would never disconnect your dashboard’s wiring when the light goes off for the engine.  You take the car to the mechanic to find out why the light went off.  Why then do we effectively disconnect our own “pain wiring” by ingesting chemicals that dull pain?

Prescription painkiller dependency will never decrease until we all start treating the cause of our pain instead of masking it with chemicals.  There is nothing that gives me more joy than a patient that tells me that they no longer need their pain pills because they addressed the cause of their chronic pain.  It’s my mission to make sure that everyone understands that the body does have the ability to heal and that they can live drug-free and pain-free. 

If you know of someone who is dependent on painkillers, please forward this blog post to them.  I’ll make sure they find a doctor who can help them break free!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 5:59 pm and is filed under April 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.