LESSON PLAN ESSAY
What is the emotional side of the Opioid Epidemic like?
Lesson Plan Essay
Thomas Carroll
Being an addict is hard, being an opium addict is very hard. But have you ever thought how hard it is on the addict’s family? This feeling a family member has when their loved one is going through hell is something that is very hard to understand unless you are going through it. Trying to help someone that just won’t let you help them, it’s almost as if you are going through it with them. This is detrimental to the family member because you see a perfectly normal human being turn into a monster, than even worse die. Opioids are normally used as an over the counter painkiller to help people recover from surgeries, but because of the addictiveness opioids are hard to get off.
For just a pill in the cabinet, it can do a lot. Not only does it numb pain, but it tears apart relationships. Opioids are a prescribed drug although they are narcotics, they are in the same class as deadly drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine. Because of how hard it is to get off opioids and how bad the withdrawals are people aren’t themselves. Opioids attach to some parts of your brain and body to make you feel happy, but when stripped away people have withdrawal because of the opioids addictiveness. “Opioids are safest when used for three or fewer days to manage acute pain, such as pain that follows surgery or a bone fracture. If you need opioids for acute pain, work with your doctor to take the lowest dose possible, for the shortest time needed, exactly as prescribed” (“Am I Vulnerable to Opioid Addiction?”). The withdrawal symptoms can be quite harsh. Things like hot and cold sweats, abdominal cramping, insomnia, and some even leading to fatalities. “The central nervous system, which includes the brain, cardiovascular and respiratory systems, has opioid receptors that receive opiate drugs, and these drugs bring a variety of physical and emotional effects. Heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and body temperature are lowered while pleasant feelings are increased” (Lautieri). Anyone who takes opioids is at risk of developing an addiction. Your personal history, and the length of time you use opioids, plays a role. but it's impossible to predict who's vulnerable to eventual dependence on and abuse of these drugs. Drugs affect different people differently. These doctors are prescribing people too high of doses and when their prescription runs out they become addicted. Eventually the patients have to keep going and getting more until their addiction becomes fatal.
“In 2010, there were reportedly as many as 2.4 million opioid abusers in this country, and the number of new abusers had increased by 225% between 1992 and 2000. Sixty percent of the opioids that are abused are obtained directly or indirectly through a physician's prescription. In many instances, doctors are fully aware that their patients are abusing these medications or diverting them to others for nonmedical use, but they prescribe them anyway. Why? Recent changes in medicine's philosophy of pain treatment, cultural trends in Americans' attitudes toward suffering, and financial disincentives for treating addiction have contributed to this problem” (Lembke).Though drugs affect people differently there is always a bad withdrawal process which affects the family because of traumatic mood swings, and the person in withdrawal is a different person.
Addiction is so hard to get over. It puts a toll on people, a lot can’t take the risk and try to quit because it is so hard. This is a big deal to the user’s lifestyle and mental state. It is very easy for people to get their hands on opioids because they are over the counter drugs. So it is easy to get there fix but they are insanely overpriced. So eventually people who don’t have the best income that are hooked to opioids need their fix but can’t buy their normal prescription. The quickest and easiest solution is to switch to street drugs that can simulate the same effects. "Most people that I know don't use OxyContin to get high anymore," one opioid user said in the study. "They have moved on to heroin [because] it is easier to use, much cheaper and easily available” (Moghe). Sadly, heroin is the closest people can get. Though an opioid, it is more of a recreationally used narcotic that is fatal. Because of this the addicts are changing their hole lifestyle. Now everything is revolving around Heroin and they can’t get their life back together. “When you take opioids repeatedly over time, your body slows its production of endorphins. The same dose of opioids stops triggering such a strong flood of good feelings. This is called tolerance. One reason opioid addiction is so common is that people who develop tolerance may feel driven to increase their doses so they can keep feeling good” (“Am I Vulnerable to Opioid Addiction?”). This quote not only relates to the painkillers but also heroin because the more you take the more you yearn for more. Because of this it is really hard to focus on the outside life and their family because they are obsessed with that fix.
Because of the opioid epidemic, grandparents are starting to take over the family because their child became addicted and they need to care for their grandchildren and the actual parent can’t. Grandparents are taking up that role again due to the parent’s addiction of opioids. They can’t take care of themself, how would they raise a child well with such a burden. “Grandparents who weren’t necessarily ready for this situation, aren’t financially ready. About six percent of Vermont’s population are households where grandchildren are living with their grandparents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 American Community Survey. This places a financial and emotional burden on older individuals who are trying to help raise their grandchildren amidst the trauma that the family may be going through” (“Opioid Addiction: A Family Crisis | Treatment | BAART Programs”). Think about the mindset of the grandparent. Parents will always take blame for something wrong but always gives credit to their child when they do something right. The Grandparent thinks it is their fault ‘not raising their kid right’ and raising a failure now has to take care of their child’s child. They would be so scared because they think it is there fault, imagine the feeling.
Grandparents shouldn’t have to be raising their second generation of kids. These drugs do more to people than anyone could think, there’s more than just physical pain. People and relationships will die. “An opioid addiction can also break family bonds. Much of this is due to individuals with an opioid addiction who may lie to a loved one, steal from them, or become verbally or physically abusive to get what they need to support their addiction“ (“Opioid Addiction: A Family Crisis”). Through all of this, family members don’t trust each other and the bond is broken. Opioids kill more than people, they kill trust, they kill families.
Bibliography
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This source was humbling. It showed how anyone could be an addict, no matter the circumstances. It related a lot to a teenagers mindset. An innocent bystander that got into an accident accidently got addicted to their painkillers.
Darke, Shane. “Yes, People Can Die from Opiate Withdrawal.” NDARC - National Drug and
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This source was helpful because it shows how intense and deadly opioids can be. Darke goes through every hurtful moment in taking opioids. He shows the very dark sides of the process.This research piece helped to get the harsh truth.
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This article was helpful because it shows the transition into pain prescriptions to opioids, and eventually transitioning into harder drugs. It also explains the signs of being on opioids in a physical and mental way.
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This article wasn’t useful for numbers and statistics but it really helped me understand what the effects of these drugs are. The source was an informative piece on how opioids affect different people under different circumstances. This really helped me understand how malicious these drugs are.
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This source helped me a lot during my research process. It assessed the potential of misusing over the counter opioids.
Lautieri, Amanda. “Opiate Withdrawal Timelines, Symptoms and Treatment.” American
Addiction Centers, americanaddictioncenters.org/withdrawal-timelines-treatments/opiate.
This source was packed with information of the withdrawal process. It also went into depth of what the best treatment centers should offer for patients and how the patients should be treated. This article helped a lot with my research and the certain times of how long it takes for opioids to enter the brainstream. The article also provided how to contact an addicted person and how to approach them.
Lembke, Anna. “Why Doctors Prescribe Opioids to Known Opioid Abusers | NEJM.” New
England Journal of Medicine, www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1208498.
This article is helpful because it explains the problems pregnant women and their opioid addiction. It also explains how their children are affected by their addiction, being raised with an addiction. And it explains the withdrawal systems, and is also very in depth.
Melemis, Steven. “Opioids - Opiates: Addiction, Withdrawal, Crisis, Recovery Facts.”
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This article is helpful because it shows the signs of opioid addiction and helps me understand how people got hooked. It helps answer a lot of simple questions that were needed to be answered.
Moghe, Sonia. “Opioids: From 'Wonder Drug' to Abuse Epidemic.” CNN, Cable News Network,
14 Oct. 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/health/opioid-addiction-history/index.html.
This article explains the come up of opioids and how it has affected our nation. This helped a lot in the research process because it helps to know the come up of the drug t understand how it became what it is.
Murthy, Vivek. “Ending the Opioid Epidemic - A Call to Action | NEJM.” New England Journal
of Medicine, 22 Dec. 2016, www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1612578.
This article is explaining the possible solutions to the opioid crisis. It was really interesting to see what people’s views are on this topic and what they think could stop it.
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This article is important to my paper because it shows how Opioids started and how addictive it is. It explains how organizations are helping the epidemic and fighting for the people addicted. This article is important to my research because it explains how many people are addicted and what will help them.
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This article brought something new to my research, it approached the topic tolerance. It explains how genes and tolerance affects the use of opioids in the body. Because of tolerances people have different dosages and that’s how people start to lean on the drug. This source was very helpful.
“Opioid Addiction: A Family Crisis | Treatment | BAART Programs.” BAART, 1 Aug. 2018, baartprograms.com/vermonts-opioid-addiction-a-family-crisis/.
This article was about the families of the addicts. It was insanely sad and hard to read, but put to perspective of what the families are going through.
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This article was also very different, it talks about how babies become attached to opioids from their mothers. This is a very sad and harsh topic, but it must be discussed. This source covers the basic needs of knowledge of this topic but it also gets very emotional. The article was very helpful to bring a really sentimental topic to my thesis.
Stein, Christoph. “The Control of Pain in Peripheral Tissue by Opioids | NEJM.” New England
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This article was a more scientific source. Though it was confusing it was very informative on how Opioids affect the body and how it affects different people in different ways.
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This Article explains how Opioids work and the effects of using them. This Article is useful because it helps understand where the user gets the drug. It also explains where the problem aroused, how it began. This article explains how Opioid users seem different when they are on them, and the signs that the user is on. This article is important to me because it helps me understand the effects on the users and to show how dangerous the withdrawals.