“I’m surprised at all the coverage heroin addiction has received in the past few months. Breathless headlines are appearing in all forms of media about our “new” addiction problem. Friends send me links to articles about addiction since they know that’s the field I work in. I’m as surprised to see all the media coverage now as I used to be puzzled about the lack of coverage five years ago. I’ve been treating opioid addiction for the last fourteen years, and the opioid addiction epidemic isn’t new. It’s been very well established for years.
Perhaps the idea of using heroin jolts people more than the idea of using prescription opioids. Maybe people don’t understand that prescription opioid addiction has the same physiologic process as heroin addiction. Manufactured pain pills have less variation in content than balloons of black tar heroin, so there may be less risk of overdose. However, the body responds the same to both types of opioids. The body develops addiction and physical dependency in the same way to both heroin and prescription opioids, and withdrawal symptoms and cravings are the same. Both overdose and death happens with both types of opioids.”
Read more at: https://janaburson.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/heroin-epidemic-versus-pain-pill-addiction-epidemic/
Source: Dr. Jana Burson – September 6, 2015