Understanding Addiction to Pain Meds

The family of painkillers known as the opioids and morphine derivatives is highly addictive. Pain killers such as codeine are not meant to be taken for a long time. Even relatively harmless medicines such as tylenol with codeine can be dependency creating if someone takes them on a regular basis.

What To Do About Addiction

Addiction to pain meds is something that a lot of people joke about, especially people who suffer from occasional mild migraines or other acute illnesses. However, this addiction is a real thing. Anyone who suffers from recurring pain and who takes painkillers for more than a couple of days a week, or for more than a week at a time, should talk to their doctor to find out if there is a non-addictive medicine that they could be taking instead of codeine or morphine.

Morphine is a strong painkiller, but the way that it acts on the nervous system means that it should be used only for severe, short term pain, such as after an operation. If someone uses morphine regularly, their body becomes tolerant to it and greater doses are needed to achieve the pain killing effect. When they stop taking the pain killer, they may experience some unpleasant side effects including cravings and phantom pains.

How To Get Help

Painkiller addiction is incredibly common, even among people that you would not expect to be susceptible to displaying patterns of substance abuse, such as athletes. The good news is that there is support available for people who need help to beat such an addiction, and because doctors are more aware of how addictive some medications can be these days, they are more careful about what they prescribe, and they are willing to help people with chronic pain find safe ways to control their symptoms without having to rely on drugs.

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