Pain Relief - Fixing the Problem

STEPS TO IMPROVE YOUR VALUABLE HEALTH

 1. correction of poor health
 2. prevention of ill health
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Improved spinal function
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Improving body functions
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Boogaard’s Death Shines Light on Painkiller Addiction

By Rob Vanstone, Postmedia News May 25, 2011 Comments (2)   

MINNEAPOLIS — Derek Boogaard’s untimely death underlined the dangers posed by painkillers if they’re not taken as prescribed.
Boogaard, a veteran NHL enforcer from Regina, died May 13 at his Minneapolis apartment. The death was deemed to be accidental — the result of combining alcohol with a potent painkiller, oxycodone.
Speaking in general about the effects of the drugs, Kelly Volkmann, a Bloomington, Minnesota-based licensed independent clinical social worker and a licensed alcohol and drug counsellor, talks about what can happen if alcohol and oxycodone are mixed.
“Say you took one pill of hydrocodone (another painkiller) and you had two drinks. It’s really like having four drinks,” she says. “If you take someone who has a tolerance to oxycodone and they’re taking four pills and then they take four drinks, you double the amount of alcohol that you have in your system, and you have two depressants mixed together. People don’t realize, essentially, how quickly those effects can occur in the body.”
Consumption of alcohol can slow the heart rate. Factor in a narcotic painkiller, which can cause respiratory depression, and the consequences can be catastrophic.
“The other piece of the puzzle is that when people are drinking, they’re not obviously making the best choices,” adds Dr. Jon Grant, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota who is an authority on addiction-related issues.
“People then take more of their drugs for pain than they should because they’re not thinking about the consequences. They’re not thinking, ‘Ahh, that’s right. My doctor told me to take one a day, and now I’m taking a handful.’ So alcohol in general just makes people make worse choices.”
Boogaard was voluntarily undergoing counselling in the NHLPA/NHL Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health Program at the time of his death. Although Boogaard dished out punishment as one of the NHL’s pre-eminent enforcers, he also suffered from significant pain during a six-year big-league career — sustaining multiple concussions, injuring a shoulder, and encountering back stiffness.
Although Boogaard earned a seven-figure salary with the New York Rangers last season, and was well-compensated during five previous years with the Wild, he ended up paying a significant price in return due to the rigours of his occupation.
The extent to which Boogaard used painkillers remains unclear. On a wider scale, however, painkiller consumption affects millions of people of all descriptions.
“When we think about the misuse of these painkillers, it’s all segments of society,” Grant said. “Sometimes we think that the people who are using pain medications are the homeless people or the criminals. Addiction in general sort of crosses all education levels and all financial levels.”
The issue regarding painkillers is surprisingly prevalent. Grant quoted a 2008 study by the Center for Disease Control, which discovered that 4.7 per cent of Americans said they had used narcotic pain medications (such as oxycodone) for non-medical purposes.
“A lot of young people — we’re talking about adolescents — can get it through the Internet or they can steal it from their parents or other people,” Grant says. “It has had a very big party-value quality to it.”
And then there are the users who begin taking the pills for reasons that are strictly medicinal, only to develop a reliance. This is more likely in situations where long-term use is prescribed.
“For some people, they start out as using it as a painkiller,” Volkmann says. “They were prescribed it. They have legitimate pain. Over time, though, the longer you’re on it, the harder it is to get off of it.”
The fact that the drug is prescribed by a physician can lull those who consume it into a false sense of security.
“People might think that it’s safer because it’s prescribed, so then they start to abuse it more,” Volkmann says, referring to prescription painkiller use in general.
Volkmann notes that prescription-drug abuse has increased 200 per cent over the last 10 to 15 years. Despite those alarming figures, prescription-drug abuse is often overlooked or downplayed by the media or the public at large.
“In general, the misuse of pain medications doesn’t get enough attention,” Grant says. “Physicians are becoming aware of it, but the population at large isn’t.”
Regina Leader-Post2 comments
10:04 AM on May 26, 2011
As soon as I read Oxycontin I knew he was in trouble. I can believe doctors even prescribe these things.They are deadly.
3:11 AM on May 26, 2011
How about some attention to the fact that in many cases "pain killer" prescriptions are used as long term crutches in lieu of actually FIXING the cause of the pain?