Why should parents be concerned about prescription pain pill abuse?
Prescription pain medication, when abused, poses a very real danger to young people. Teens and parents tend to overlook the potential danger, thinking they are “safe” under any circumstance because they are prescribed by a doctor. Pain pills are widely available – often as close as your own medicine cabinet, and there is little stigma to their use. Unaware of the dangers of mixing drugs with alcohol, teens may combine prescription painkillers with other drugs or alcohol. Finally, evidence suggests that teens who become chemically dependent upon prescription pain pills often resort to using heroin when their pill supply dries up.
The recreational use of pain pills has declined among our nation’s youth over the past decade. In the 2017 Monitoring the Future survey, 4.2% of 12th grade students reporting misusing prescription opioids in the past 12 months. That’s one out of 25 teens playing with fire and facing dangerous risks associated with prescription pain medication abuse.
What are prescription pain pills, anyway?
Prescription pain medicines called “opioids” are derived from the opium poppy, and they can have similar effects to heroin when abused. Commonly abused opioid pain medications include OxyContin, Vicodin, Norco, Opana and Percocet. Street names for these opioids include Hillbilly Heroin, Oxy, Roxy, OC, Oxycotton, Percs, Happy Pills, and Vikes. The physical appearance of prescription pills can be different from year to year, so refer to an online pill identifier if you need help figuring out what various pills look like.
Pain pills can be deadly
Opioids can affect many parts of the body. In addition to controlling pain, opioids can cause sleepiness, confusion, nausea, constipation and breathing problems. Opioid misuse can result in death.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new report that found 72,000 people died of opioid-related overdoses in 2017. This number includes overdose from prescription opioids and street opioids like heroin. Among young people, males are about three times more likely to overdose from opioid abuse than are females. The risk for overdose and death are increased when people combine opioids with alcohol or other drugs, especially antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications.
Chemical dependency (“addiction”) can also result from pain pill misuse. Chemical dependency to drugs or alcohol results from a complex interaction of hereditary risks factors and environmental triggers. Some kids are more vulnerable to chemical dependency than others. Addiction, characterized by the need to continue use of the drug to avoid withdrawal symptoms, is tremendously damaging and potentially deadly.
How do people abuse pain pills?
The National Institute on Drug Abuse considers it abuse when someone takes a medication that was prescribed for someone else or takes their own prescription in a way not intended by a doctor for a different reason – such as to get high.
People abuse pain pills by taking others’ pills; by taking too many of them; by changing their form (crushing them and snorting the powder through a straw; by heating the pill on tin foil and inhaling the smoke; or melting or “cooking” the pills and injecting them.) Taking the medication only for the purpose of getting high is also considered prescription drug abuse.
Pain pills can lead to heroin use
Prescription opioid pain medications are among the most commonly abused drugs in the United States. They can have effects similar to heroin, which is derived from morphine extracted from the opium poppy.
Prescription pain pills are expensive and difficult to obtain, so people who become chemically-dependent may need to resort to heroin, which is cheaper and easier to find on the streets. Nearly half of young people who injected heroin surveyed in three recent studies reported abusing prescription opioids before starting to use heroin, an opioid extracted from the opium poppy. Girls were significantly more likely to become dependent on pain relievers than boys, a finding that the researchers suggest may reflect, in part, girls’ greater tendency to share prescribe pain relievers with friends.
Many young people report that crushing prescription opioid pills to snort or inject the powder introduced them to this dangerous method of drug taking and set the stage for heroin use.
Precautions and conversations to have
- Count all your prescription pills and watch for any missing doses. Better yet, keep them under lock and key. Make sure Grandma and Grandpa do the same.
- If your child is prescribed pain medication, talk with doctor and obtain the bare minimum necessary to manage the pain. Ask for a non-prescription alternative to manage the pain. Closely monitor any prescription medication and make sure it is taken as directed. Keep an eye on the quantity of pills; because pain pills command a high price on the open market, sometimes teens sell them, or guests or workers in your home may steal them to abuse or sell.
- Talk with your teen about the dangers of prescription pills. Check out our Parent Awareness Report on Talking with Your Teens about drugs and alcohol to help you with those conversations. Make sure your teen knows that that opioids are dangerous, especially when combined with other drugs.
- Keep an eye out for pills in prescription bottles or baggies in your child’s backpack, purse, sports bag or other hiding places.
- If your teen shows signs of intoxication, start drug testing him or her. Let your teens know that drinking or doing drugs is not tolerated and that you will drug test them randomly in the future. This may give your child a welcome face-saving “out” to peers who are pressuring them to use or abuse. Let them blame a drug-testing mom or dad as they bow out of the party scene.
From prescription pain meds to heroin
As heroin use has become more mainstream, the image of the typical heroin “junkie” no longer fits. Heroin use is rampant among young people in suburban towns across the country. It is an “equal opportunity” drug abused in all neighborhood, rich and poor.
Young people have reported that crushing prescription opioid pills to snort or inject the powder gave them an initiation into this way of taking drugs, and users sometimes move to up heroin because it is cheaper and easier to obtain than prescription opioids.
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), in 2016 about 948,000 Americans reported using heroin in the past year, a number that has been on the rise since 2007. This trend appears to be driven largely by young adults aged 18–25 among whom there have been the greatest increases.
What does heroin look like?
Heroin usually appears as a white or brown powder or as a black sticky substance, known as “black tar heroin.”
Heroin Street Names
Smack, Junk, H, Black tar, Ska, Horse, Brown
How is heroin used?
Heroin can be injected, inhaled by snorting or sniffing, or smoked. These all deliver the drug to the brain very rapidly, making it both dangerous and addictive.
How does heroin affect the brain?
Studies have shown some deterioration of the brain’s white matter due to heroin use, which may affect decision-making and the ability to regulate behavior and respond to stressful situations. Some heroin users develop tolerance, in which more of the drug is needed to achieve the same intensity of effect. Others become addicted, which is characterized by the need to continue use of the drug to avoid withdrawal symptoms. An overdose of heroin will impact respiration and reduce the amount of oxygen that reaches the brain. Reduced oxygen can have short- and long- term psychological and neurological effects, including coma, permanent brain damage and death.
Other dangers from heroin
Heroin use is associated with a number of serious health conditions including fatal overdose, spontaneous abortion, and needle-borne diseases like hepatitis C and HIV. Chronic users may develop collapsed veins, infections of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, constipation and gastrointestinal cramping, and liver or kidney disease. Pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health of the user as well as from heroin’s effects on breathing. Street heroin often contains toxic contaminants or additives that can clog blood vessels leading to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain, causing permanent damage to vital organs.
If a chronic heroin user reduces or stops use of the drug abruptly, he or she may experience severe symptoms of withdrawal. These symptoms—which can begin as early as a few hours after the last drug administration—can include restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps (“cold turkey”), and kicking movements (“kicking the habit”). Users also experience severe cravings for the drug during withdrawal, which makes it really difficult to stop permanently.
How can you tell if someone is high on heroin?
People who inject heroin report feeling a euphoric rush accompanied by dry mouth, a warm flushing of the skin, heaviness of the extremities, and clouded mental functioning. Following this initial euphoria, the user nods in and out of an alternately wakeful and drowsy state. They may have “pinpoint” pupils. Users who do not inject the drug may not experience the initial rush, but other effects are the same.
What do you do if you discover your child is using opioids?
The National Institute on Drug Abuse offers guidance and resources if your teen or young adult has problems with drugs or alcohol.