|
Just How Dangerous Is OxyContin, Anyway?
By: Albert Frantz
OxyContin belongs to a family of drugs called opioids, which are derived from the opium poppy and are among the most common drugs used to address both chronic and acute pain. Due their abuse and addictive potential, they are nearly always prescribed with caution.
Opioids suppress the body's response to pain by acting on what is called the mu receptor, which is a molecule that bonds with the body's natural pain killers. The mu receptor is thus the body's most significant pain gateway. It also bonds with opiate drugs such as heroin and morphine. This receptor affects not only the experience of pain but also of euphoria, which contributes to the addictive potential of these drugs.
Unfortunately, medical textbooks inform us that all opioids have been abused, and there is no way around their high abuse potential.
To control distribution of addictive drugs, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency classifies drugs for regulatory purpose into schedules, of which there are five. Schedule 1 drugs, like raw opium and LSD, are as close to completely prohibited as is possible (they're permitted, for instance, in special laboratory research circumstances), while schedule 5 drugs are common over-the-counter medications that pose extremely little risk of addiction or abuse.
Where do opioids fit into the picture? Oh, they're in with their schedule 2 neighbors heroin, cocaine, morphine, amphetamine and the like. All except oxycodone (the active ingredient in OxyContin), which despite an addictive potential comparable to heroin is in the more "harmless" schedule 3!
OxyContin has been popping up in the news quite a lot lately. It's become the drug of choice among new addicts. In fact, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, between 50 and 90 percent of new patients admitted to drug rehabilitation programs in the states most severely affected by OxyContin abuse (West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia) list OxyContin as their drug of choice.
To be fair, chronic pain sufferers are seeking relief from their pain, rather than a dangerous high, and medication certainly plays a useful role in pain management in many circumstances. Further, OxyContin becomes most addictive when its long-acting time-release safeguard is circumvented, usually by chewing the pill, thus releasing the active drug oxycodone all at once. Patients using the drug legally, for its intended purpose and under their doctor's supervision are clearly at less risk.
Still, the risk is definite and grows over time, as all opioids are known to diminish in effectiveness over time, mandating either higher doses or opioid rotation (temporarily switching to a new opioid) or both. Further, withdrawal symptoms can be experienced when patients stop taking opioids, making them crave more drugs. In fact, many patients report that their sensation of pain is worse after ceasing treatment than it was before they started! (In some cases, such as cancer, this effect could be attributed to the progression of the disease.) Surely it's best never to get started along this vicious cycle.
Let us understand that even dangerously addictive drugs have their legitimate medical uses, one of which may indeed be to relieve chronic pain sufferers of their plight. Still, regardless of whether or not you and your doctor choose drugs as one means of treatment, never forget that pain is a message that you're doing the wrong thing or you're doing things wrong. Listen to your body. Don't shoot the messenger.
|
About The Author
Albert Frantz is an American concert pianist living in Vienna, Austria, where he came as a Fulbright Scholar in 1998. Diagnosed with scoliosis in his adolescence, he was told by his doctors "not to worry." Unfortunately, he didn't. It was not until much later, some years following his sudden discovery of the piano and classical music in his upper teens, that round-the-clock unilateral back pain resulting from the curved spine would cripple his playing ability.
Never one to back down from a challenge, despite overwhelming obstacles Albert stubbornly refused to give in to his doctors' prognoses and set about with ferocious determination to restore his body to health once and for all. After years of intensive research and therapies, he is nearly pain-free and is enjoying a gradual comeback to the concert stage.
Albert created http://www.backpaincoach.com to offer fellow back pain sufferers the knowledge, tools, insights and psychological strategies to live healthy and pain-free lives.
Copyright 2005 Albert Frantz / www.backpaincoach.com -- All rights reserved.
|
This article was posted on February 26, 2005
Return to Index
email this
page
Still haven't found what you are
looking for?
Try this search:
Free Email
List Reveals health,
fitness and wellness
tips - secrets and information - delivered directly to
your inbox
How to Benefit from the Mind-Body Connection
(excerpt)
You are about to gain insight into the
mind-body connection. The number of
people who truly understand these principles on our
planet are relatively few.
There is an undeniable connection between our minds and
bodies, you can learn
to use this fact to your benefit.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and
Miracles" was once a
distraught cancer surgeon until he
began to understand the greater principles
of the mind-
body connection. He felt dragged down by the artificial
barriers
that existed between patient and doctor, and the
helplessness he often felt as
a result of his inability
to effectively serve those patients. Eventually, those
barriers
were disintegrated by Dr. Siegel's recognition
and growing understanding of the
mind-body connection and
how it could serve his patients and himself.
Dr. Siegel, or Bernie as he began to have his patients
refer to him, had some
startling realizations as a cancer surgeon. He found that
there were actually
quite a few people in the world that successfully beat
the statistics on cancer
survival. He began to recognize that a patient's ability
to defeat something as
serious as cancer had to do with the patient's mind and
attitude about their
disease.
If you would like to see the rest of
this article, please go here:
http://www.tobeinformed.com/repository/mind-body.html
copyright 2004 - David Snape
|
|