After years of working in the field of drugs and alcohol addiction. We are getting more and more calls from people that became addicts from legitimate drug prescription.  It can be from pain killers, benzodiazepine type of drugs. People are not made aware of the danger of these medications when they are used for a even short period of time.

People call our help asking us how they can Detox from it. Most of them does not have any help or supply some resources from their own doctor. Also doctors do not check with their patients if they have a personal history of addiction. When it is the case you do not prescribed opiates based medication or they need to closely monitor their use of it. People goes back to their doctors and just told them that they still have pain and the prescription is renewed or even increase. People also will go from doctors to doctors (doctors shopping) asking for a prescription for pain. At that point they are hooked on it pretty bad.

This is a list of what people suffer when they withdraw from heavy pain killers:

Physical symptoms can include:

• Anxiety
• Nausea
• Muscle pain
• Insomnia
• Fever
• Chills

These symptoms are not mild they are really intense. Also it kicks in within a few hours of missing a dose. It makes the person very anxious to get the medication because they cannot stand the withdrawal effects.

It is a reason why people start getting the medication on the black market or they will switch to anything that is available like a different medication or even drugs such as heroin or morphine. They became fully addicted to prescription drugs and at some point they are not even using the drug to get high but they are using it to not get sick.  It definitely needs better monitoring from authority and better education of the medical personnel to avoid creating new addicts.