Prescription Drugs

Thinking the abuse of prescription drugs is a phase is like thinking baldness is a phase. Certain prescription drugs – pain medications, depressants, and stimulants - when abused, can alter the brain's activity and lead to dependence and addiction.

Prescription drugs are abused by seniors as well as teenagers - and everyone in between. Prescription drugs are easily accessible, and often seen as an inexpensive means to experience a heightened sense of pleasure, euphoria, drowsiness, increased energy, or various other effects depending upon the drugs being used. Prescription drugs--when taken as prescribed by a physician--successfully treat a variety of mental or physical conditions. However, when abused, the side effects of prescription drugs may life-threatening, they can alter the brain's activity and lead to debilitating or critical health problems and result in physical or psychological dependence. Continued use points to dependence and addiction and may require intervention, treatment and long-term recovery management, similar to that of alcohol or illegal drug addiction.

 
CASE NOTES: "The Wall Street Broker"
(When They Won't Quit, page 120)

Often a patient will spend the first week or two in treatment complaining, and just figuring how to go through the motions until they can be “sprung.” In this case the patient, a type-A Wall Street broker, addicted to stimulants and depressants, complained and moaned, and displayed a condescending attitude toward every aspect of his proposed recovery. However, when I went to see him for his mid-treatment visit, I noticed a real change in his attitude. He was more reserved and seemed more at peace. When I asked him about it, he said, “I just realized I have a disease and I’m not the rat I thought I was. It just dawned on me that these lectures are about me. I just thought they were talking about the losers and nuts all around me – who are addicted to alcohol and illegal drugs.”