What Is Substance Abuse?
Substance abuse isn't something you should take lightly. It occurs when you use alcohol, prescription medicine, and other legal and illegal substances too much or in the wrong way.
Substance abuse differs from addiction. Many people with substance abuse problems are able to quit or can change their unhealthy behavior. Addiction, on the other hand, is a disease. It means you can’t stop using even when your condition causes you harm.
Commonly Abused Drugs
Both legal and illegal drugs have chemicals that can change how your body and mind work. They can give you a pleasurable “high,” ease your stress, or help you avoid problems in your life.
Alcohol
Alcohol affects everyone differently. But if you drink too much and too often, your chance of an injury or accident goes up. Heavy drinking also can cause liver and other health problems or lead to a more serious alcohol disorder.
If you’re a man and you drink more than four drinks on any day or more than 14 in a week, you’re drinking too much. For women, heavy drinking means more than three drinks in one day or more than seven drinks a week.
One drink is:
- 12 ounces of regular beer
- 8-9 ounces of malt liquor, which has more alcohol than beer
- 5 ounces of wine
- 1 1/2 ounces of distilled spirits like vodka and whiskey
Prescription Drug Abuse
What Is Prescription Drug Abuse?
Prescription drug abuse is when you take a medication for a reason other than why the doctor prescribed it. Experts estimate that more than 18 million people ages 12 and older have used prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons in the previous year. That’s more than 6% of the U.S. population.
Abusing drugs -- even prescription drugs -- can change how your brain works. Most people start by choosing to take these medications. But over time, the changes in your brain affect your self-control and your ability to make good decisions. At the same time, you have intense urges to take more drugs.
Which Prescription Drugs Are Commonly Abused?
The National Institute on Drug Abuse says three classes of prescription drugs are often abused:
Opioids. Since the early 1990s, doctors have been prescribing many more opioid painkillers such as codeine, hydrocodone, morphine (Astramorph, Avinza, Kadian, MS Contin, Oramorph SR), and oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin). This is partly because of the rising age of the U.S. population and because more people are living with long-term pain.
These medicines manage pain well and can help boost your quality of life when you follow your doctor’s directions on taking them. It’s possible but not common to become addicted to or dependent on opioids when you use them for a short time or under a doctor’s close watch. But when you take them for a long time, they can lead to drug abuse, dependence, and addiction.
Opioid overdose can also be life-threatening. If you take them with medications that work on your central nervous system -- including alcohol, barbiturates, or benzodiazepines such as alprazolam (Xanax), clonazepam (Klonopin), or diazepam (Valium) -- you have a higher chance of breathing problems or death.
Opioids can cause a mild joyful feeling. Some people using them illegally snort or inject them to get that effect faster. Injecting drugs raises your chances of getting diseases like HIV and hepatitis C.
Central nervous system (CNS) depressants. Millions of people in the U.S. use benzodiazepines (Ativan, Valium, Xanax) to treat anxiety and sleep disorders, including insomnia. They affect a chemical in your brain called GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). GABA lowers brain activity, making you drowsy or calm.
Related:
Barbiturates -- including amobarbital (Amytal), pentobarbital (Nembutal), phenobarbital (Luminal), and secobarbital (Seconal) -- are also CNS depressants. Doctors use them for anesthesia and prescribe them to treat seizures.
Taking CNS depressants for a few days or weeks may help you feel calm and sleepy. But after a while, you may need larger doses to get the same feeling. Using them with alcohol can cause slow heartbeat, slow breathing, and death.
If you take CNS depressants for a long time and stop suddenly, you might have life-threatening problems such as withdrawal seizures.
Stimulants. These drugs give your body a jump-start, with a huge boost in alertness, energy, and attention. They raise your heart rate, blood sugar, and blood pressure. They also narrow your blood vessels and open your airways.
Doctors started using stimulants to treat asthma and obesity. Today, they prescribe them for conditions such as ADHD, ADD, depression, and narcolepsy. Examples of stimulants are dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine, Dextrostat, ProCentra), lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse), methylphenidate (Concerta, Daytrana, Methylin, Ritalin), and a mix of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine (Adderall).
Stimulant abuse -- for instance, by taking them in higher doses or by crushing pills and snorting them -- can lead to addiction. High doses can raise your body temperature. Misusing stimulants or using them along with decongestants may cause uneven heartbeat.
Prescription Drug Abuse Risk Factors
Research shows that some things about you might make you more likely to abuse prescription drugs. These risk factors include your:
- Friends’ or colleagues’ influence
- Age
- Biology, or things in your genes
- Mental health
- Knowledge about prescription drugs and how they might hurt you
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Is There Treatment for Prescription Drug Addiction?
Treatment for opioid addiction includes medications that can help people get control without a high chance of addiction.
Buprenorphine treats opiate withdrawal and dependence. Doctors often use it along with the drug naloxone (a combination that can be called Bunavail, Suboxone, or Zubsolv) to prevent relapse.
If you’ve been taking buprenorphine in pill form and your body has gotten rid of all of the drug you were abusing, you might have another form of buprenorphine implanted under your skin. This is called Probuphine. It provides a constant dose of buprenorphine for 6 months. Buprenorphine also comes as a monthly shot called Sublocade.
Other drug treatments for opiate withdrawal include methadone and the blood pressure medicine clonidine. Naltrexone blocks the effects of opiates and can prevent a relapse. It can be taken orally (Revia) or as a monthly injection (Vivitrol).
Doctors recommend that people who misuse opioids keep naloxone, a medication that can reverse an overdose. It comes in a shot (Evzio) and a nasal spray (Narcan).