A Perceived Rise in Prescription Drug Addiction

It seems as if lately we hear more about prescription drug abuse. While there’s a perceived rise in prescription drug addiction, it’s always out there. The issues unique in my opinion in prescription drug addiction is that the dealer is often the physician – where I’m going to connect, where I’m going to get my drugs, is from my physician. And like every other industry, the great majority of physicians are extremely reputable and upon realizing that their patient is faking whatever the symptoms may be, they stop giving them the drugs.

But there are doctors, and they become very well known, where you just go in, pay your hundred bucks, and get your prescription for 90 or 120 or 160 OxyContin a month, and those are very, very valuable on the street. You can service a pretty significant addiction if you’ve got five or six docs going, or you can sell them on the street and make quite a bit of money.

You can go on the Internet and get prescription drugs. I’ve done interventions on a number of individuals where you go in and there’s a large envelope from Africa from Dr. Kumar, as an example, and it’s a package filled with Vicodin. The access is there – it’s always going to be there – the denial aspect of it from the addict’s perspective is, “I can’t be an addict I get these from my doctor.”

That was true in the 1960s, almost 50 years ago, when prescriptions for Valium were going through the roof. They were known as mother’s little helper; keep mom calm. Prescription addiction is nothing new, there’s just a wave that’s ridden, but it’s always going on.