The integrated system of analysis and forecast abuse and addictions (SIAPAD) of the Lombardy Region, in the June 2016 report, underlined that about half a million people used, during the year, a opiate drug In Lombardy, 31.9% of these outside of a therapeutic treatment.
22% of the people who have taken these drugs have obtained them without prescription. The Siapad report showed that the number of people who have used opiate drugs without prescription is greater than the number of those who have taken heroin. Although the assumption of opiates outside of medical supervision does not mean having taken them improperly, they are still psychoactive substances that can give over and dependence.
There Dependence on painkillers It is a form of both psychological and physiological dependence deriving from the abuse or misusoons of medicines (pain relievers, analgesics, anti -inflammatory, opiates). In recent years, a greater consumption of PinkiLers (PK) is being witnessed based on active ingredients such as: Idrocodo (Vicodin), Idromorfone (Dilaudid), Meperidine (Deverol) and Obicodone (OxyContin).
Compared to other substances of abuse, these are simple medicines to be found even without prescription, low cost and with effects very similar to other psychoactive substances. In addition, the “drug” classification is more reassuring and less stigmatized than that of “drug”, but a opiate drug Evil used, and outside of medical supervision, it involves typical consequences of substances dependence disorder (dus), such as craving, tolerance, abstinence and gradual impairment of personal functioning.
The cases in which people begin to use PK under prescription (for example following an intervention) are not rare and subsequently seek and use the drug for the activating or relaxing sensations that induces.
When the use is repeated over time, the first signs of addiction to the substance (need to increase the dose of medicine to continue to obtain the same effects), of abstinence from substance (psycho-physical symptoms in correspondence with the suspension of the intake) and Craving (intrusive thoughts on the substance, on its finding and its assumption and compulsive desire for the substance).
Some authors spoke of “accidental heroin” dependence referring to heroin dependence that often arises from PK repeated abuses, as these substances basically have the same psychotropic effects.
Below is a list of “alarm bells“Useful to evaluate whether you are developing or if you have already established an addiction to PK:
- Often think about drugs or the next intake;
- Do not literally follow the prescription (doses and intake times);
- Try to find PK without prescription;
- Have used for long periods of time PK;
- Try annoyance or irritation if the drug is voluntarily or involuntarily suspended.
