Addiction...it can happen to anyone

It recently came to my attention that people who use opioid medications for pain management might not understand the difference between drug abuse and addiction. It is possible for an individual to become addicted to a drug even when it's prescribed for a legitimate medical condition and is taken as directed.

Consider the definitions of these words:

Addiction:
Habitual psychological and physiological dependence on a substance or practice beyond one's physical control.

Drug Abuse:
Habitual use of drugs to alter one's mood, emotion, or state of consciousness.

As you can see from the definitions above, addiction and abuse are not the same thing.

That is the slippery slope when patients use opioids for pain management. This is not to say that opioid medications have no place in pain management; it is simply a fact that when the opioid pain medications are used routinely over time, addiction will happen. It does not matter if the user is abusing the medication or not, it's just the nature of the drug. That is why multi modal pain management is so very important!

Source: Dictionary.com; Flickr; Pixabay

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Living with Chronic pain hits the big screen!

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Everyday pain management ideas

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