Opiate Addiction
Posted by admin at 00:28 | Filed In Drug Abuse Help
Opiates are chemical substances that are mainly used in the medical field for treatment and relief of pain. They work by binding with opioid receptors in the central nervous system and gastrointestinal tract to stop the sensation of pain. It acts as a depressant, thereby inhibiting neural response, changing the heart rate and dulling the feeling of pain and helplessness.
Opiates, when taken, can lead to several adverse effects which can include nausea and vomiting, constipation, dry mouth, drowsiness and miosis. Other less frequent side effects can be experienced such as respiratory depression, hallucinations, urinary retention, muscle rigidity and flushing. The most pressing danger with taking opiate is respiratory failure which can be likely caused by opiate overdose. This can cause an individual to stop breathing entirely, and die.
The number of people who become victims of opiate addiction seem to regularly increase, despite all the widespread drug enforcement efforts all around. Addiction to opiate based pain killers usually start of with an all too familiar chain of events: you may get into a car accident, or slip and fall, or strain some muscles while playing sports, all leading to an injury, or you are recovering from surgery or perhaps undergoing cancer treatment or severe arthritis. Whatever the underlying causes are, all these prompt your physician to prescribe you some pain killer to alleviate your pain and discomfort. Yet, weeks or even months later, long after your injury has healed, you find yourself still taking Oxycontin, Vicodin or other opiate painkiller prescribed to you. You feel your pain becoming more and more frequent, and that you need to take in alarmingly more for the opiate to be as effective.
Unfortunately, when this case happens, the opiate drug which was supposed to help you relieve your pain is what not causes your pain. What you are going through now would not be pains caused by your injury, but that caused by the discomfort of withdrawal from the drug. You have become dependent to the drug without you even noticing.
What happens then, if you become addicted? Long term use of opiates can change the way the nerve cells in our brains work. They end up getting used to the presence of the opiates and they start to need it in order to work as normally as possible. If you decrease your intake or suddenly stop your dependent nerve cells from getting their usual dose, they become overactive. These leads to various withdrawal symptoms such as fever, sweating, aching, extreme craving for the drug, shaking and chills, and other far more worse. It is usually strong during the first 6 to 15 hours, intensifies in the next 2 to 4 days, and gradually declines in a week or two. But the good news is that your nerve cells will work normally again and you can get your opiate-addiction free life back. For more information on opiate and other pain killer addictions, please visit http://www.mypainkilleraddictions.com.
My name is Maryann and I am a recovering opiate addict from pain killers. I now enjoy sharing my story of conquering that horrible disease. I pride myself on helping other people get through the hard, gripping times of an opiate and pain killer addiction.
You can visit my site Pain Killer Addiction for more information on opiate and pain killer addiction, and how to conquer the disease.
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