Becoming addicted to opioid painkillers is a serious problem. Having a way to identify who is more likely to abuse painkillers would help physicians determine who should avoid them if possible. A study has found people who smoke or who used to smoke and those who have ever had a drug addiction are more likely to keep using opioid pain relievers long after their pain is gone.
Most people who need strong opioid painkillers after an injury or surgery take them as directed, stop using them when the pain is gone, and benefit from the relief they get from these medications.
But some people keep using these medications and ask for renewals on the prescriptions. They do not stop or cannot stop using them. A study published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings looked at a group of 293 patients who had been prescribed opioids in 2009. The drugs that were prescribed for these patients included oxycodone, morphine, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, meperidine, codeine, and methadone. Twenty-one percent of the patients went on to continue to use opioids for 3 to 4 months. Six percent went on to have a long-term pattern of using the drugs for more than 4 months.
The study found that people who were past or current smokers or past or current substance abusers were more likely to become long-term users of opioid drugs. "From a patient perspective, it is important to recognize the potential risks associated with these medications. I encourage use of alternative methods to manage pain, including non-opioid analgesics or other nonmedication approaches," said W. Michael Hooten, M.D., lead author on the study and an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. "That reduces or even eliminates the risk of these medications transitioning to another problem that was never intended."
Painkiller addiction and abuse of opioids is a serious problem in the United States. "Many people will suggest it's actually a national epidemic. More people now are experiencing fatal overdoses related to opioid use than compared to heroin and cocaine combined," Dr. Hooten said in a statement from the Mayo Clinic, citing data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
