Women More Likely to Become Opiate Dependent than Men
Constant research is being done to better understand the opiate epidemic. As more and more research is conducted and the results are analyzed, additional data is coming to hand, giving us a little more insight to the problem. Opiate addiction is an insidious thing. It creeps up on unsuspecting users. One day, a person is taking their pain meds after having surgery and before they know it, they’re sticking a needle in their arm just to take the withdrawals away. They don’t know what happened, it just sort of progressed. Opiate addiction progresses from pain pills to heroin quickly. After having surgery, a person is prescribed pain pills, they like the way they feel so after the doctor cuts them off, they go on the hunt for more pills. And the pills get expensive after a while so they wind up on heroin. The interesting thing is, I always see more men than women in rehab, but recent studies show that should be the opposite.
A recent study by the United States for Non-Dependence show that women are 40% more likely to become opiate addicted than men after surgery, especially middle-aged women. Not only do they show more cases of persistent opiate use but middle-aged, “Gen-X” women are more commonly overprescribed painkillers than any other age group. Women 45-54 years of age have a higher death rate from opiates than women of any other age group and it appears opiates have become “mother’s little helper.” One of the contributing factors to this increase in addiction is that some of these women don’t realize how powerfully addictive these drugs are and when given them after routine surgery, they take them, completely unaware of the risks involved. And since they’re being over-prescribed, many of these women continue taking their painkillers for six or more months following their procedure.
Monique Tello, MD, MPH, a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital said:
“You may be using opioids appropriately, but then you take them a little more often than you did before, and pretty soon you’re taking them regularly just to feel normal.”
And we all know what happens after a person begins taking painkillers just to “feel normal.” The graduation from pills to heroin comes quite quickly and now housewives are finding themselves desperate for their next fix. It’s a whole new definition of the “desperate housewife.”
This is a scary scenario that many middle-aged mom’s and wives are getting completely hooked on opiates. I guess if cops, doctors, lawyers and even stay-at-home moms can get addicted to painkillers, just about anyone can. As this problem grows, I am glad more information is being released to the public about how dangerous this situation is and how no one is immune to it. Knowledge is power and the more the public is made aware of the dangers of drug use, maybe fewer people will choose to try drugs at all.
But that would be in a perfect world and let’s face it, this world is far from perfect.
