Overcoming Painkiller Addiction

Painkiller addiction can be very tricky and it can sneak up on just about anyone. Accidents can happen and almost anyone can become the victim of terrible, chronic pain that seems to overtake their life. The only seeming solution for something like this, in many cases, is to go on a heavy, opiate based painkiller. For some people, this can lead to dependency and in some cases full blown addiction.

The problem with using opiates to treat pain is that they do not really treat the pain at all. In fact, what they do is to simply dull the brain. There are pain signals that travel through the body to the brain, telling the brain "Hey! I'm hurting! There is a problem here!" The narcotic medications do not actually help your physical pain in any way at the source, and they don't really divert the pain signals in your body either. What addictive narcotics do is they simply dull the brain so that it no longer minds the pain signals that it is receiving from the source of your pain. The effect is a bit like making your brain drunk without getting your entire body drunk. This is the "rag in the alarm clock" approach to pain management.

So opiate painkillers (these are the kind that are addictive) do not really medicate our pain, they simply drug our brain and make it care a bit less about the pain signals in our body. Other medications, such as nsaids like Ibuprofen, reduce inflammation and can actually reduce the level of pain in your body right at the source.

So if you become addicted to painkillers, then you will have to figure out a number of things in order to recover. The first thing you will have to do is to get your body physically detoxed from the medication. Opiate withdrawal can be extremely uncomfortable, so it is recommended that you go to a drug rehab center that has a detox unit so that you can get off the pills under direct supervision. Most treatment centers will also treat your withdrawal symptoms in some way and make it more bearable for you to endure.

The second thing you will have to do in order to overcome painkiller addiction is to find a new way to manage your chronic pain. As mentioned above, there are alternative medications that are not addictive that can actually work better than opiates in some cases, because they do more right at the source of the pain. In addition to this, you might try a pain clinic, where they can treat your pain locally on a daily basis. There are also things such as TENS units and holistic remedies as well that might be able to help you manage your pain without opiates.

The final piece of the puzzle when overcoming a drug addiction is to create a new life for yourself without chemicals. Yes, that is a huge challenge and the idea of doing so is really a tremendous effort. If you have been addicted to painkillers for a long time then you are going to have to focus on your recovery and learning a new way to live for a long time as well. We did not become addicted overnight so it takes time to build up a successful recovery.