Round-up Magazine October 2015

Bridges to Recovery: Understanding Addiction to Prescription Medication Triggered by Chronic Pain

By Michel Sucher, MD Addiction to painkillers as well as other prescription drugs is a national epidemic. The occurrences today are so prevalent they touch each of us in some form or another – whether through a loved one, our patients or even ourselves. The growth in the use of prescribed pain relievers has resulted in a widespread epidemic of prescription drug misuse and addiction among people of all ages, posing an even larger addiction problem than their illegal counterparts.

As an emergency physician in Arizona for more than 20 years before specializing in the field of addiction medicine, I treated my share of critical incidents arising from drug-related trauma, drug interactions and overdoses. I now lecture extensively to medical groups across the country on how the addiction situation has evolved and where we are at today in the treatment of prescription medicine addiction, especially focusing on what many consider to be the most dangerous area – narcotic painkillers.

Most physicians recognize that we have essentially become a society of painkillers-on-demand, and it’s resulted in unintentional addiction for people who have an underlying medical condition causing them chronic pain. At Community Bridges, we have made significant advances in this area of treatment. We recognized a number of years ago that we were seeing an increase in prescription drug addiction where many people had some injury or illness that caused chronic pain, triggering their addiction disorder. CBI developed a comprehensive approach to unintentional addiction, recognizing that addiction is a primary disease and that all substances and behaviors associated with addiction are addressed in treatment.

10 • Round-up Magazine • October/November 2015