Why Abusing Prescription Drugs Can Be So Dangerous
Feb 28th, 2008 by Manju
Problems involving the use of prescription drugs are much more difficult to detect than when people are taking “street drugs.” This is particularly true when a medical doctor is prescribing the medications to a patient he believes requires that specific drug for a medical condition.
Perhaps a patient has undergone some trauma that has had an adverse emotional affect on their ability to function in a job. After eliminating other factors, the physician decides to prescribe a tranquilizer to calm down his patient.
If that patient takes more of the medication than is prescribed, it could cause an overdose and even death. Driving under the influence of prescription medication can be just as dangerous as driving while intoxicated with alcohol.
Even when a patient does not take more than prescribed, after some time has passed, the body gets immune to that dosage and requires more to get the same effect. At that point, the doctor may increase the dose of the medication.
Unfortunately, this cycle can continue until the dosage required to give the desired result could be enough to cause the person to accidentally overdose. Without medical treatment, this could result in brain damage or even death.
Some patients have a number of different physical ailments requiring numerous medications. If the patient sees a specialist for back pain, for example, and another for headaches, there could be a potential problem with contra-indicated medicines. In other words, the patient could be getting one medication for the back pain and another for the headaches, with the combination of the two medications causing severe reactions.
If a patient is trying to get medications to get “high,” this could be difficult for the prescribing physician to ascertain. Unfortunately, the body does not know whether the person is taking the medication for that purpose.
The body just reacts to the medicine and tries to eliminate what is too much. When the liver isn’t able to detoxify these drugs, serious complications could result. The patient could end up on dialysis if the kidney function is compromised.
Prescription drug abuse is very common and goes untreated in many patients until something happens that causes a near-death situation. Be aware of the serious nature of all drugs and use caution at all times. For more information on drug abuse, see these articles on Relapse Trigger #4, Relapse Trigger #5 and Relapse Trigger #6.