How do I recognize a prescription drug problem?

Prescription drug addiction warning signs include:

• Physical: Fatigue, repeated health complaints, red and glazed eyes and a lasting cough
• Emotional: Personality change, sudden mood changes, low self-esteem, irritability, irresponsible behavior, poor judgment, depression, general lack of interest
• Family: Starting arguments, breaking rules, withdrawing from the family
• School or Work: Decreased interest, negative attitude, many absences, truancy, visiting many doctors
• Social Problems: New anti-social friends, problems with the law, withdrawal from friends

The Office of Diversion Control (DEA) Practitioner’s Manual

Pain Resources

• Alliance of State Pain Initiatives: www.aspi.wisc.edu
• American Council for Headache Education: www.achenet.org
• Arthritis Foundation: www.arthritis.org
• City of Hope Pain/Palliative Care Resource Center: www.cityofhope.org/prc
• The Cochrane Collaboration: www.cochrane.org
• Fibromyalgia Network: www.fmnetnews.com
• International Association for the Study of Pain: www.iasp-pain.org
• National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care: www.nationalconsensusproject.org
• UCLA History of Pain Project: The John C. Liebskind History of Pain Collection: www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/biomed/
• University of Wisconsin Pain and Policy Studies Group: http://www.painpolicy.wisc.edu/
  

Responsible Prescribing of Opioids for the Management of Chronic Pain

Author: Nicholson B.

Source: Drugs, Volume 63, Number 1, 2003 , pp. 17-32(16)

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Abstract:

The management of patients with chronic pain is a common clinical challenge. Indeed, chronic pain is often inadequately controlled in patients with cancer and in those with non-cancer chronic pain. Because of the complex nature of chronic pain, successful long-term treatment is more difficult than for acute pain. Most often acute pain is nociceptive, whereas chronic pain can be nociceptive (i.e., in response to noxious stimuli), neuropathic (i.e., initiated by a primary lesion or dysfunction in the nervous system) or mixed in origin.

Opioids are the current standard of care for the treatment of moderate or severe nociceptive pain. Opioids mediate their actions by binding and activating receptors both in the peripheral nervous system and those that are found in inhibitory pain circuits that descend from the midbrain to the spinal cord dorsal horn. Opioid agonists exert a number of physiological responses including analgesia, which increases with increasing doses.