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One of the possible contributors regarding prescription opioid abuse is the message given to patients regarding the likelihood of addiction. There is often a disconnect between the language of health professionals and the common understanding of lay people.
I found a printable patient brochure on morphine and other opioid medicines in palliative care from a support organisation and it makes the following statements:
"Opioid medicines are not addictive when used for pain
When your doctor chooses the right dose of opioids for your pain, you will not become addicted. Addiction only occurs when people have no pain and they abuse opioid medicines."
This may be true when one uses a technical and very specific definition of addiction, but to the lay person, addiction encompasses both tolerance and dependence, both of which are features of opioid analgesics. Thus, giving the above statements to a patient is actually giving them false information and false confidence in the abuse potential of opioid analgesics. In plain English understandable to the lay person it should rather read "you will likely become addicted despite using the medicine for a legitimate purpose, as that is simply what happens with these medicines."
Opioids are potent, addictive analgesics (pain medicine) that trick and trap us by creating the fleeting euphoria of analgesia (pain-free), but the sustained sickness of hyperalgesia (pain-sensitivity). The euphoria of analgesia and the sickness of hyperalgesia are polar opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds us to the sickness, and the sickness makes us crave the euphoria. Perversely but predictably, opioids create, aggravate, and perpetuate the very sickness of hyperalgesia that they fasely seem to cure, thus placing many potent analgesics in a bad light.
Re: Canada’s prescription opioid epidemic grows despite tamperproof pills
One of the possible contributors regarding prescription opioid abuse is the message given to patients regarding the likelihood of addiction. There is often a disconnect between the language of health professionals and the common understanding of lay people.
I found a printable patient brochure on morphine and other opioid medicines in palliative care from a support organisation and it makes the following statements:
"Opioid medicines are not addictive when used for pain
When your doctor chooses the right dose of opioids for your pain, you will not become addicted. Addiction only occurs when people have no pain and they abuse opioid medicines."
This may be true when one uses a technical and very specific definition of addiction, but to the lay person, addiction encompasses both tolerance and dependence, both of which are features of opioid analgesics. Thus, giving the above statements to a patient is actually giving them false information and false confidence in the abuse potential of opioid analgesics. In plain English understandable to the lay person it should rather read "you will likely become addicted despite using the medicine for a legitimate purpose, as that is simply what happens with these medicines."
Competing interests: No competing interests