Lower Risk with Greater Results

Taking care of physical pain now-a-days is as easy as popping a pill and many Americans, one out five, have fallen prey, admitting to abusing a prescription drug at least once in the life time. Fortunately, a larger amount uses them appropriately, finishing them off as the doctor prescribed, or tossing them out when the physical pain subsides.

              Experts continue to research why some people become addicted to prescription painkillers, and have found there is a clear genetic predisposition to addiction. Prolonged drug use is likely to create chemical changes and taking pain pills can produce a rush to these individuals, which ultimately reinforces a cycle, making the brain crave more.

                In 2002, the Food and Drug Administration approved the buprenorphine drug product, Subutex, and although buprenorphine is considered an opioid drug, and can lead to addiction to those users who do not have opioid addition, those addicts who have received buprenorphine treatment have experienced a high success rate.

                Buprenorphine is an opioid that causes some concern in the average lay-man when it comes to subjecting the patient to buprenorphine treatment. The drug can produce typical opioid side effects like euphoria and respiratory depression, but its maximum effects create considerably less damage to the patient when matched with prescription drugs or heroin and methadone. What’s more is that the drug’s limits are linear, meaning there is a ceiling on how ‘high’ the patient can get during buprenorphine treatment. Ultimately this results in a substantially reduced risk of continued abuse or addiction. In the appropriate dosage during buprenorphine treatment, the drug can block effects of painful withdrawal symptoms.

                Although there are side effects during buprenorphine treatment like nausea, vomiting, and constipation, the alternative of continued opioid abuse is a substantially larger and more dangerous list. Insomnia, irritability, diarrhea, and a mild fever are just to name a small handful, but the sociological dangers to opioid addiction are alienation of family and friends, failure at work or school, and criminal careers.

                At the Pat Moore Foundation we treat patients with the care and comfort they deserve as human beings. Withdrawing is a painful process and buprenorphine treatment is there to help our patients.