Prescription drugs are easy to get, misuse

By Liz Szabo
Gannett Media Service

Debra Jones didn't begin taking painkillers to get high.

Jones, 50, was trying to relieve chronic pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis.

Yet after taking the painkiller Percocet safely for 10 years, the stay-at-home mother of three became addicted after a friend suggested that crushing her pills could bring faster relief. It worked. The rush of medication also gave her more energy. Over time, she began to rely on that energy boost to get through the day. She began taking six or seven pills a day instead of the three to four a day as prescribed.

"I wasn't trying to abuse it," said Jones, from Holly Springs, N.C., who has since recovered from her battle with addiction. "But after 10 years, I couldn't help what it did to my body or my brain. It was hard to work without it."

Addiction to prescription painkillers -- which kill thousands of Americans a year -- has become a largely unrecognized epidemic, experts say. In fact, prescription drugs cause most of the more than 26,000 fatal overdoses each year, said Leonard Paulozzi of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of overdose deaths from opioid painkillers -- opium-like drugs that include morphine and codeine -- more than tripled from 1999 to 2006, to 13,800 deaths that year, according to CDC statistics released Wednesday.

In the past, most overdoses were due to illegal narcotics, such as heroin, with most deaths in big cities. Prescription painkillers have now surpassed heroin and cocaine, however, as the leading cause of fatal overdoses, Paulozzi said. And the rate of fatal overdoses is now about as high in rural areas -- 7.8 deaths per 100,000 people -- as in cities, where the rate is 7.9 deaths per 100,000 people, according to a paper he published last year in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.

"The biggest and fastest-growing part of America's drug problem is prescription drug abuse," said Robert DuPont, a former White House drug czar and a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "The statistics are unmistakable."

About 120,000 Americans a year go to the emergency room after overdosing on opioid painkillers, said Laxmaiah Manchikanti, chief executive officer and board chairman for the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians.

More sales, more addicts

Experts say it's easy to see why so many Americans are abusing painkillers.

There are lots of the drugs around, and they're relatively easy to get, said David Zvara, chair of anesthesiology at University of North Carolina Hospitals.

As Americans age and carry extra pounds, more are asking for pain relief to cope with joint problems, back pain and other ailments, Zvara said. He said he has seen a huge increase in the number of patients seeking care for chronic pain.

Paulozzi notes that the rise in fatal overdoses almost exactly parallels a corresponding rise in prescription painkiller sales. In surveys, about 5 percent of Americans say they have used a prescription narcotic in the past month.

Doctors today are also more apt to prescribe pain pills in an effort to relieve real suffering, said James Garbutt, a UNC addiction specialist.

Of course, many people take painkillers legally and carefully follow their doctors' prescriptions. The medical profession has paid more attention to adequate pain relief for terminal cancer patients, for example, who aren't in danger of addiction, Zvara said.