No one expects their prescription to become a problem. "Take this for your back pain," or try this for your anxiety. You take the medication just as the doctor ordered. Most of the times it works, the condition is managed and you move on with your life.
But sometimes things get complicated. A medication that was supposed to work for a short while becomes one that you can't quite function without. A prescription that resolved one problem, somehow created another problem. And then you find yourself in this bizarre situation: you bought into the system, paid to do what the doctor advised, and now you're somewhere, you really didn't mean to be.
This happens far more than most people will openly admit, and everyone, most certainly including the purposely or accidentally naive doctor who wrote the prescription, is surprised when it happens. Whenever that happens, it produces quite a situation, because follow-ups with the primary care doctor and traditional healthcare can hardly fathom what some people are experiencing.
When Following Orders Goes Wrong
Prescription drug issues don't start with someone willfully abusing a medication, they start with someone's legitimate and real life concerns- back surgery, chronic pain, panic attacks, long-standing insomnia, or whatever brought a person to the doctor's office.
The meds do initially work. Sometimes they work incredibly well. The pain goes to a manageable level, the anxiety dissipates, sleep gets easier and everything appears to be going according to plan. The physician may even increase the medication dosage when the dosage you started with stops being as effective. This makes total sense from a medical point of view.
However, bodies are complex. They adapt. What used to work stops working the same way. A dose that used to last you through a full day may only be enough for maybe half a day before you're thinking about when you can take it again. Then you wonder what will you do when you've finished the prescription.
Physical dependence is different than addiction, but when you're living through it, it feels very similar. Your body becomes accustomed to having that medication in the system. When it's not there, everything seems to go haywire. Hearts races, you sweat, and you have thoughts that you could literally crawl out of your own skin. This isn't something you can just wish away or will your way through.
Those trying to navigate this situation often find that specialized facilities focused on comprehensive care, such as a prescription drug addiction treatment center, understand these complicated medical situations in ways that regular primary care specialties aren't trained to handle.
Why Your Primary Care Physician Can't Fix This
Family doctors are terrific physicians. The problem is, they don't see prescription drug dependence cases every day. They can probably recognize there might be a problem, but they don't have the time to specialize and do anything with it.
And, think about how a visit to a family physician works - you get 15 minutes, there are usually 4 or 5 more patients in the waiting room, and they, as a practice, usually just deal with one problem at a time. In these circumstances, there is no real room for prescription drug dependence. It requires additional time and effort, but you also must completely alter the approach to withdrawal.
The physician may even suggest tapering off the medication (an idea that sounds reasonable). However, it's critical to consider that tapering off a prescription drug safely and effectively often requires a level of medical oversight and responsibility that far exceeds what is possible during a "normal" doctor's visit. Withdrawal is often unpredictable and in certain situations can be dangerous.
The emergency room can be useful in acute situations, but clinical environments are lacking ongoing support over time necessary to manage prescription drug problems. Outpatient counseling could help with some of the issues raised, but outpatient programs do not include the same level of medical involvement often needed to fully support the monitoring of withdrawal.
There is a gap in what the medical system can provide to what these situations actually need. Family will feel confused and uncertain about where to go when the healthcare system does not supply the proper intervention.
Differences in Care
Treatment centers that specifically cater to prescription drug problems provide care as the medically complex conditions that they are. These centers do not treat care as either a medical issue or behavioral issue, but recognize it is both, and often more complicated than either a medical or behavioral issue.
The medical oversight and intervention is drastically different than that of medically managed care. Staff who are prescription drug withdrawal trained are able to monitor one's progress around the clock, staff can adjust medications based on response to treatment, and therefore monitor for complications that require intervention when an immediate response is necessary. These programs have the luxury of time that isn't available to typical healthcare. Rather than work from a standardized protocol of care, these programs change everything around the person's actual presentation. Some people will need weeks or even months of very slow tapering, while treatment centers can make whatever on-going support a person will need.
Yet, this isn't just about tapering the withdrawal syndrome. Treatment can address all that other stuff at the same time that led someone to use drugs in the first place. Again, chronic pain doesn't go away just because someone stops taking opioids; the anxiety that led someone to take benzodiazepines doesn't go away either.
Getting Everyone on the Same Page
One of the best parts of treatment centers is that everybody is actually talking to each other. Unlike in average care where you might see a number of specialists who do not talk to each other, here you do not have to manage your own care and hope that things have not been missed in translation.
Treatment centers have an infrastructure that quickly flips the script. You have a medical team, a therapist/counselor, and probably. other specialists you haven't at least so far mentioned, who meet relatively frequently the share about the entire process for each. For the therapeutic team, everyone knows what everyone is doing, so a lot of the confusion and missed connections that are typically here, do not still happen.
The therapy and counseling big picture approaches are not your typical out-patient counseling. Individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy, treatment for other mental health issues, and any "care," all put together as part of one concise treatment plan, as opposed to who knows how many providers who may or may not communicate with each other.
The Real Underlying Issues
Prescription drug dependence almost never occur in a vacuum. There is usually chronic pain, anxiety, depression, trauma, or another mental health diagnosis or the underlying concern that led to the use of medication in the first place. These concerns, as most of you know, do not typically decline or disappear when someone stops taking medication.
A good treatment center addresses these underlying issues in addition to the management of dependence. Someone who became dependent on their pain medication post surgery will continue to have pain that needs to be managed - a person with anxiety who developed a dependence on benzodiazepines will continue to struggle with anxiety.
Full treatment will involve rebuilding physical health that may have been lost through extensive use of medications. Proper nutrition, exercise tailored to one's individual capabilities, sleep restoration, and stress relief strategies all factor into a long-term recovery program that extends far beyond simply stopping a medication.
When You Truly are Ready for More Help
Knowing when regular healthcare will be insufficient care can be very difficult. We carry a level of stigma when acknowledging that prescribed medication potentially has gotten out of hand, in some cases to a point that differs from other substance issues, if that makes sense.
However, prescription drug dependency is a medical diagnosis and often includes the need for specialized medical treatment, in the same way that cardiologists treat heart problems, or endocrinologists treat diabetes. Recognizing one needs specialized treatment is not a matter of failure, and it is recognizing that usually one needs specialized medical care.
The element to look for, is a treatment provider that truly possess an understanding of the medical side of treatment as well as genuine compassion and understanding of what someone is dealing with. The very best treatment providers will treat someone as a whole person with complex needs rather than simply treating someone as a collection of symptoms to manage.
Once a person has crossed over into dependency, treatment centers are equipped to provide appropriate, comprehensive, medically managed care for individuals coping with these situations. This is really not a question of moral destitution or character deficit. Assistances, assistance sort out the fact that it has begun for one reason or another, and understand that a holistic idea of treatment is required because someone is managing a complex medical issue.
Leave a Reply