Search for tag: "drug addiction"
What to Do if You Suspect Your Child Is Using DrugsSubstance use in children can start as early as… +7 More
March 17, 2022
Kids Health
Mental Health
Interviewer: What should you do if you suspect your child is doing drugs? It's a scary moment for any parent. I mean, how do you know for sure? What's the best strategy for talking to them about it? How much can you do on your own and when should you see a professional?
I'm going to answer those questions with our expert today, Dr. Mary Steinmann. She's a psychiatrist who specializes in child and adolescent psychiatry.
Dr. Steinmann, let's start at the beginning here. We're going to cover a lot of ground today. But what is the first thing a parent should consider if they have a reason to believe that their child may be using some sort of a substance?
Dr. Steinmann: So I think there's definitely a difference between experimenting with substances and actually developing a substance use disorder. And so it can actually be fairly normative or expected behavior in children and adolescents to be curious about or experiment with substances. But we also know that using substances can really place individuals at risk of developing later substance use disorders. So it's something that we want to take very seriously and be able to help parents identify signs in their own children that may warrant additional questioning or additional evaluation or perhaps even getting additional help and support and resources.
Interviewer: Yeah. So if experimentation can be normal . . . I would imagine as a parent, as soon as I saw my kids or had the idea my kids were using drugs at all, I would be like, "Oh, they've got a problem." But you're saying that that's not always the case?
Dr. Steinmann: That's right. It's definitely concerning behavior. It's not something that parents need to be complacent with. I think it's important to actually dissuade substance use and to talk to kids about the dangers of substance use and the potential consequences of substance use, because there are a lot of them.
Kids don't tend to think about long-term risks very much. Their brains aren't hardwired to think about long-term consequences until, honestly, sometimes their 20s. And so that's where I think it's helpful for parents to kind of take a role of, "These are the rules in our house. This is what our views are. These are what our values are. Here's what's acceptable and unacceptable behavior for our house. But I am also here and open to answer questions or listen to what you have to say. Or if you find yourself in trouble, intentionally or unintentionally, I am here for you."
Interviewer: So I'm a little confused. If you suspect that your child is using a substance and maybe . . . I don't know. Do parents generally have a good idea if it's early on? When you said, "Don't be complacent," do you just kind of sit back until you start seeing a problem develop, or do you jump right in as soon as there's some sort of substance use and say, "I understand this is just a natural thing. If you ever want to talk about it, we should"? I mean, I don't quite understand that differentiation.
Dr. Steinmann: I think a lot of the differentiation depends on families, right? So there are some families where even alcohol use or smoking is not a practice in the home, and so there might be a different baseline for a family addressing substance use and experimentation and how they approach that topic in their children, versus maybe a family where there is recreational alcohol use, or occasional nicotine use, or what have you. And so there are some baseline cultural differences that I think go into play.
We certainly want to educate our kids up front about what the dangers are, and say, even if you're comfortable as a parent, "This is kind of my own experience with using substances," talking about responsible use, if that is a value in your home. And in other homes, that might not be acceptable at all.
But kind of laying down, "This is what our family values here, our baseline. I understand you may be tempted to experiment with things. Here are my concerns about that."
And then also knowing your child and knowing their baseline and being able to identify if they're starting to behave differently, if they're starting to hang out with a different peer group, knowing what their peer group is and who their friends are. Having those consistent expectations is really important, but then also providing that guidance, that education, "This is what we value in our family."
That may be no substance use whatsoever. That may be, "This is the concern I have about you using substances right now as an adolescent." And that's the stance I tend to take as a child and adolescent psychiatrist. It's, "I'm concerned about the effect that any substance has on your developing brain. I understand you might be tempted to use. I discourage that, but I am also here if you have questions," and not to shut down that conversation prematurely.
If curiosity develops, if they're like, "Well, I see you drink all the time. Why can't I?" being prepared to kind of have those discussions so that then that increases your chances of having your child actually be honest with you if and when they start down that path, and being available to support and guide and eventually seek help, if needed.
Interviewer: So it sounds like if you suspect your child is using substances, and maybe they're just at the point where they're just kind of experimenting, that's a great invitation to have a conversation at that point?
Dr. Steinmann: Exactly. And even before use. I think sometimes we overestimate the age at which kids may actually be exposed to substances in schools, but we may be having these conversations too late sometimes and setting those expectations too late sometimes.
And so being aware that a lot of times, by middle school, kids are already exposed to peer groups or other folks who use, and maybe thinking about this for themselves. We may be wanting to even have those conversations earlier, depending on the environments in which our kids socialize.
Interviewer: And it sounds like a parent's kind of mindset is super important for this first conversation from the standpoint that I think . . . Well, first of all, what are some of the reactions that you see parents have when they find out their kids are using drugs? I can imagine there could be some anger that is probably born out of fear, because drugs can be detrimental to somebody's life. There's probably the thought that only bad kids do drugs. Are there some other reactions you see? Or what do you see?
Dr. Steinmann: Fear is a big one. And I love what you just said as far as anger often being born out of fear. Anger is a very reactive emotion. We all get angry over a lot of things. But if we dig deep, a lot of times it does come from that fear, either because we're terrified of . . . We just want the best for our child. We want them to grow up to be the best version of themselves that they can be, and there are serious consequences to problematic and ongoing substance use. There can be dangers to even intermittent substance use. And so fear is a very, very common and normal response to parents.
Also, that anger component of fear or fear that gets manifested as anger tends to be the emotion that then puts our kids on the defensive and shuts them down.
And so even though it's a completely valid emotion and an understandable one as a knee-jerk response on the parents' end, it may be the one that we want to kind of work on our own response to continue to invite that conversation instead of making the child feel that they're a bad kid because they thought of going to a party with their friends or even tried to ask a question or to get clarification for themselves or to seek help. Very often it's that fear of anger and punishment that keeps kids from seeking help.
Other common responses I get are often, "Only bad kids do that." And I think probably what parents often mean by that is the behavior is certainly concerning and undesirable, but that doesn't mean our child is a bad kid. There's a difference between the behavior and who someone is as a person, and sometimes kids can overly internalize that.
And so, if a parent's response is, "Well, only bad kids do that," or, "My kid possibly can't do that," that's a form of denial that probably needs to be addressed, especially if you're starting to see telltale signs of substance use or behavior changes. And we can talk about that in a little bit.
Or it can be, "Well, why are you judging my friends? They're not bad people. I know who they are. You don't," which can also raise defensiveness and unwillingness on the part of the child to engage more in that conversation.
Interviewer: Let's say a parent has suspected that their child is using a substance. They've had the conversation, they followed your advice, but then they start noticing, like you mentioned, some personality changes or they start becoming more concerned that it is escalating to a different level. Is that the point that you would get your child help, or is there another intervention that a parent would do first?
Dr. Steinmann: I think there are a couple different routes to go. So we have that conversation. Maybe we were lucky enough to have that conversation upfront before use even started, and the conversation had exactly the effect that we intended to have, which is to deter use. That's kind of the best possible scenario. "Hey, let's talk about the dangers of this." The kid acknowledges, "Yep, that's not a behavior that is good for me," and we move on.
Maybe experimentation happened, and then I think it's important to have the conversation potentially of, "What was that like for you?"
Understand what drives a behavior. We don't tend, as human beings, to engage in behaviors that don't work for us, especially in the short term in teenagers.
And so some may admit, "Hey, I've been really stressed out and I tried alcohol," for example, "and it helped me to feel better." Wow. As a parent, I would want to know, "Well, what's been stressing you out? Is there something else that's healthier that we can kind of engage in? Because, once again, I have my concerns about kind of going this route to address stress and manage stress. Are there different things that we can work together on to help you out with?" and seeing if we can get to the underlying driver of that behavior.
If the behavior continues despite, "Hey, we have a house rule we don't smoke, we don't engage in underage drinking, we don't engage in any forms of substance use" . . . which again is my stance, really, as a physician, because I'm concerned about that brain development . . . and the use continues, then we might need to consider additional types of interventions and understanding what's underlying that continued substance use.
I'm also going to be keeping a close eye on function. Function is really, in psychiatry and in medicine and mental health, what we look for to really start to make that distinction of, "What's the difference between substance use and a substance use disorder?"
And when we say the word "disorder," what we really mean is there is some impairment in academic functioning, in relationships, and that could be friends, family, etc. Are we engaging in additional risk-taking behaviors? Are we putting ourselves in safety risk by result of use? Are there legal consequences? Are we carrying vape to school, for example? All of those things would be red flags for more serious problematic use and possible disorder that might warrant additional treatment.
Interviewer: When a child is using a substance, is there generally some other underlying cause? Is it really truly just kind of a symptom of something else going on? I mean, either experimentation out of curiosity or an underlying condition, or are there other reasons?
Dr. Steinmann: It can be all of the above, honestly. What can start as experimentation can then kind of just spiral out into use for other reasons.
Some people may never engage in use but may find themselves starting with symptoms of anxiety or depression and then are just trying to find a way out of feeling that way. And they may have tried other things or talking to friends or things like that, or hear that, "Well, taking this has helped for me. Maybe it would help you too." And so it can sometimes be a chicken-and-the-egg type of scenario, honestly.
Interviewer: All right. Sounds like we have two steps so far. A parent suspects their child is using a substance, they have a conversation because it's just experimentation. Then that behavior continues, they have another conversation again asking this time, "Is there something else going on?" or, "Why are you using it?" or, "How does it make you feel?" reiterating the rules or the policies in the household. What would be the third step if it continues on past that point?
Dr. Steinmann: I would say then it's probably time to get some external support and some help. And honestly, it's never too early to get external help and support. Again, if this is just a conversation that, for any reason, a parent might struggle to have with their child or not know how to approach it, it is perfectly fine to seek out professional help to help learn how to have that conversation.
And there are a lot of other internet resources that are available if you don't have the ability to talk to somebody.
But I would seriously then consider looking at other resources, including a therapist or a primary care physician.
Not all cases of substance use disorder have to go directly to a psychiatrist, just like not all cases of depression and anxiety need to go to a psychiatrist. Sometimes talking with external supports, such as your child's pediatrician or primary care provider, someone that has an established relationship with them and knows them, can be a good middle-ground next step to get additional support before jumping into subspecialty options, although those are definitely certainly available.
Interviewer: Is there a negative message given to a child when you say . . . because there's a certain weight to saying, "All right. We've got to go to the psychiatrist now." You know what I'm saying? For this problem. That comes with a whole bunch of other stigmas.
Dr. Steinmann: It can. And unfortunately, getting mental health care and having mental illness needs is still really stigmatized in our society. I think that's why I generally recommend starting out with primary care if someone is having questions.
Now, granted, there are times where you would want to bypass primary care. For example, if your child has been absolutely refusing to go to school or you're noticing that they're skipping school a lot or they're getting suspended or even expelled for issues related to substance use, or you're concerned that there's an imminent safety risk, such as heavy use or heavy binge use or physical consequences from that, or you suspect a really severe underlying driver for substance use, including depression or anxiety, perhaps even things like suicidal thoughts, or if you suspect another serious mental illness, those would be things that would be quite appropriate to go up to a higher, more specialized level of care.
It can take a while to access the mental health system as well, and you don't want to get stuck in the lurch while your child is really struggling, especially if their imminent safety is on the line.
Interviewer: When you talk about substances, drug use, what does that entail for you as a physician and a psychiatrist?
Dr. Steinmann: That's a great question. I think a lot of times, when we talk about substance use, our minds automatically go to the hard stuff like heroin or cocaine or methamphetamine. We also think about alcohol and nicotine and marijuana, which are a little more readily available.
But there are also, especially with teenagers . . . Think about access and what you're more likely to be able to get a hold of or afford. Or what are the underlying concerns that might be problematic in teenagers, such as anxiety or depression?
This is another great example of a misperception, actually. Sometimes we think, "Well, my child is very high functioning and they do great in school. They can't possibly have issues with substance use." But I work with a lot of teenagers and young adults who may have some mild ADHD or anxiety who are very high performers and may feel compelled to be even higher performing. And so they may actually get wrapped up in overuse or misuse of cognitive enhancers, like caffeine or prescription stimulant medication.
And so having an idea of kind of the breadth of things that can be misused or abused is important.
It's scary and it can be overwhelming to think about, but it's important to, again, think about those underlying drivers of behavior and the type of direction that might lead even into substances we might not typically think about as being abusable.
Interviewer: And some of these ways of talking to the children about substance abuse might be kind of against a particular parent's parenting philosophy. We are all raised in our own ways by our own parents, and a lot of times, that's the way we raise our children. Is this evidence-backed stuff? Should somebody just go ahead and use their instincts instead going into this conversation? What are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Steinmann: I think that parents are the experts on their children, and so using your instinct can be a very powerful tool.
If you are noticing that your child is not acting like themselves, I do think it's important to ask more questions and probe. And again, by asking, you're kind of almost opening the door to, "I'm interested, I'm curious about you. I care about you."
Sometimes the hardest thing we can do, as parents, is to open the door to conversations that we might not be comfortable having, but by doing that, we're actually modeling for our kids that it's okay to talk about these things, that maybe their assumption that we're going to blow our stack or over-assume might be unfounded, that we want to be and try to be safe people to talk to because we have their well-being at hand.
I liken it in some ways to talking about suicide, for example, and suicide prevention. There's significant data that shows that simply asking about suicide does not increase the risk of suicidal behavior. And I think the same is very true for substance use.
Just because you're asking doesn't mean that you are giving permission or suggesting that they should engage in that behavior. All asking does is signaling your child that, "Hey, I'm aware that this is a problem and I want to be a person that you can rely on and trust to talk to about it."
Interviewer: For a parent listening to this interview that wants to go on to get some more information, what are some good reliable sources that they could go to online to get some help framing this or figuring out the approach or whether or not they should be concerned at this point? What do you recommend?
Dr. Steinmann: For reputable sources on the internet . . . because you're right, there are a lot out there and it can be really overwhelming to kind of weed through and find the best sort of reputable information. I really like the Substance Use Resource Center through the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, or SAMHSA, also has a lot of good resources.
And something that I found fairly recently as a resource, that I thought was very parent-friendly type of language, is through the Child Mind Institute. And they have various questions about how to talk to your teen about substance use for parents who may not be sure on how to start that conversation.
Substance use in children can start as early as middle school. While experimentation is common in teens, it's important as a parent to know how to have conversations that can prevent abuse and protect your kids' development. Learn about the strategies that can help parents speak with their teens about the consequences of substance use and identify the best time to intervene with professional help. |
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What Exactly is Opioid Addiction?Addiction is often more than strictly behavioral… +4 More
November 17, 2021
Interviewer: We know here in the United States, the opioid crisis and the addiction to those drugs is a real concern. But when it comes to the medical side of things, what is opioid addiction?
Joining us today is Dr. Elizabeth Howell. She is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine Fellowship at University of Utah Health and Huntsman Mental Health Institute. Now, Dr. Howell, just to kind of start out, like, when it comes to your perspective, what is opioid addiction?
Dr. Howell: Well, everybody has their own thoughts about it. But if you want to look at the official definition, we would look at something called the DSM, the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th Edition" of the American Psychiatric Association, and they have 11 criteria. And if you have two or more of those criteria, you have either mild, moderate, or severe opioid use disorder or other use disorders. But I think a simpler way to think about it, because I don't think the general public goes around memorizing the DSM-5, is to think of it as loss of consistent control over use of a substance, continued use in the face of adverse consequences, compulsivity or craving. And then the other part can be denial, and it doesn't mean that you don't know there's a problem, but you're not in touch with how many ways the use of the drug is affecting your life.
Interviewer: So those are behavioral things that we're looking for.
Dr. Howell: Right.
Interviewer: But when it comes to, say, biologically, physiologically, I guess, what is going on when we get into this? Because I've heard that it's not actually the drugs that are causing the addiction.
Dr. Howell: Right. The addiction is actually in the brain. And, you know, there is no addiction without a brain, so we don't know in the field if there's something different about people who get addicted before they ever use or if the drugs cause the brain to change or both. And that's a big mystery. There's actually a really neat study that we're part of at HMHI, called the ABCD Study, that may shed some light on that. But for now, we don't have the answer to that. So what we do know, though, is once people have started using regularly is that the brain is different and it doesn't react the way that the brain of someone who doesn't use drugs reacts.
So, for example, people tell me all the time, "I don't understand why they don't just quit using because I can have a drink and then stop." But the point is that that person's brain is very different than the person's brain who is unable to stop when they start. And there are a lot of different brain changes that happen, and it's interesting because you can actually track some of these brain changes to specific behaviors. So, for example, you know, being out of touch with the consequences of your actions, or not having strong feelings about anything except drugs, those can all be traced to different parts of the brain. So it is behavioral, but behavior comes from the brain and addiction and drug use change how the brain reacts to normal things in our lives.
Interviewer: When we say that the brain is different, I guess, does that mean that there are certain people that are more susceptible to addiction? Does that mean that, you know, is it nature? Is it nurture? Or are certain people just born that way? Do people, you know, grow up leading towards addiction?
Dr. Howell: It's really both. About 40% to 60% of the risk is genetic. That's only 40% to 60%. Some of the other risk comes from life experiences or, you know, where you grow up. If you grow up in a family where everybody else is drinking, of course some of that is genetic, but it is also environment and you are exposed to that. But also, trauma is a huge risk factor for addiction. Trauma, traumatic experiences in childhood, especially, can change the brain in a way that you're much more susceptible to either wanting to use, or when you do use, losing control over your use.
Interviewer: Thinking of those patients, you know, or maybe a loved one is listening right now and they have someone in mind, what kind of treatments are available? Because, I guess, one of the things I want to ask first before you get fully into the treatments is, is there a cure for opioid addiction?
Dr. Howell: There's no cure, as I think of a cure. There is treatment. And this is very similar to other illnesses that we treat in medicine. So, for example, if you have high blood pressure, there's probably no cure. You can definitely treat it. You can do things. You can lose weight. You can exercise. But even people who are very thin and very athletic can have high blood pressure. It's a medical condition. You can do everything you possibly can with your life and you could still be suffering from addiction. You might try everything. You still have, for whatever reason, a very high risk of continuing to be unable to control your use, having craving, etc.
But the treatment that we have tries to at least arrest the process. So for opioid use disorder, one of the most effective treatments we have is medication for opioid use disorder, and this can be kind of controversial for some people, but methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone, are all different medications that they work in different ways a little bit, but they do help people stabilize so that then they can get their lives back together, and then the behavioral treatments can work a lot better when your life is more stable.
So, really, treatment has to be a combination of things, and it doesn't happen overnight. There isn't a magic medicine, a magic bullet as people call it, to treat any kind of addiction, especially opioid addiction. And the medications only work when you're taking them. Once you stop taking them, your brain is still different and you can start having craving years after you ever used an opioid. And that's the disease if we want to call it a disease, or that's the difference in the brain is that the brain is always going to be seeking the drug even when the other parts of the brain know that it's destroying someone's life.
And I hear this from patients all the time. "I know this is killing me. I don't want to use, but I can't stop." And that's the terrible conundrum that people have when they're in the middle of their addiction and they want to stop. So our treatments are really to help them be able to stop safely and then try to get their lives back together and hopefully heal up some of the brain changes that have happened over the course of their addiction so that they can live a life without being addicted.
Interviewer: So now that we know a little bit more about opioid use disorder and how some of the physiological things that actually comes with this type of addiction, if there is a listener that either themselves or someone in their lives, you know, might be going through this kind of struggle, where do they start to get this treatment, to get this kind of, you know, get on the road to recovery or, I guess, remission if this is a disease?
Dr. Howell: You know, sometimes you can go to your primary care doc or provider and get some help. There are more and more primary care providers who are prescribing medication for opioid use disorder. But then there are others who don't or they don't feel comfortable with it, or they don't know that much about it. And so, then, you would go preferably to an addiction specialist of some kind. The fellowships that I run, the Addiction Medicine and Addiction Psychiatry Fellowships train physicians who finished a residency in a primary specialty to be addiction specialists and to be able to treat regular opioid use disorder and other addictions, but also how to be specialists for people who have really complicated problems, because often we see the patients who've been through many different kinds of treatment and nothing has really taken hold for them and we need to get a little bit more sophisticated or refined about how we're treating their specific addiction. And the medication is only part of it. By no means is it the only thing that you have to do. You can't just throw a medicine at somebody and expect that their opioid use disorder is going to be just fine. It doesn't work that way.
So what you would do is if you, you know, you could start with your primary care provider. If they are not knowledgeable or comfortable, then, you know, one of the things that you can do is you can call, actually, our University HMHI crisis line and they can often help people get connected to treatment because you may need to go in the hospital. It may be that severe. And yet you may just need outpatient treatment, and they can help people sort that out and figure out what's needed.
We also have a recovery clinic over at HMHI, and it's staffed by addiction psychiatrists and addiction medicine specialists and therapists and other staff. And our trainees also work there, and they can help with evaluations and recommendations for treatment. And if you can get treatment at HMHI, fine. If not, if your insurance doesn't cover it there, then we can help send, you know, refer you out to wherever you can get the treatment with your insurance coverage.
Interviewer: And for a listener who might not be in the state of Utah, I assume that there are similar crisis lines in other places of the world?
Dr. Howell: Right. Yeah. So if you're not in Utah, it varies drastically around the country, but there's generally a community crisis line. And the other thing is that there is a 1-800 number through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. But there is a website, and I think it's called "Find Treatment Now" that you can look up and find all kinds of treatment options within your ZIP code and within a certain range from your home.
Interviewer: And for listeners who might be interested in, say, those different resources, they'll be linked in the episode description, if you want to click on your app or on the website. Now, Dr. Howell, I guess the one last thing I kind of want to ask to kind of wrap this up is, what kind of hope do family members and people suffering from this disorder, you know, have when they get into treatment?
Dr. Howell: You know, most people come in to treatment and their families are pretty hopeless feeling. And I'm not trying to sugarcoat addiction. It is a disease that can be fatal, but it's not uniformly fatal. Even without treatment, a lot of people get better over time. But especially with treatment, it can accelerate that process.
There's two things that, I think, are important for opioid use disorder. One is if you are someone with opioid use disorder or you care about somebody who has opioid use disorder, you should definitely get a naloxone overdose reversal kit because the one thing I can't do is help somebody who's dead. And if you die of an opioid overdose when we could have prevented that with naloxone, it's really tragic and unnecessary. So once again, this depends on your community. In Utah, we have utahnaloxone.org and they can facilitate you finding a place that you can get a free naloxone kit to have on hand. And clearly, if you're the person overdosing, you're not going to be able to give yourself naloxone, so it's helpful to have it and for everybody in the family to know how to use it, where it is, etc. I have one in my bathroom. I have a sticker on my door at the house that says, "I have naloxone." And pretty much any addiction provider I know carries some of it around because we never know we could just be walking down the street and come upon somebody who needs to have an overdose reversal. So I would look into that and that's the first thing.
But the second thing is that there is hope for recovery, and I'm always meeting people who are in recovery, who've had severe addictions. I was in another part of the state recently and I was working with a guy on a community event, and he said, "I'm so-and-so and I used to be a heroin addict and, you know, I was . . ." and he told me all about the things in his life that were tragically going wrong. And he made a big change in his life and got into recovery. And I don't know all the specifics, but it's five years later, he's not been using for a while. He's taking care of his children. He's got his own business and he's really successful and he's very happy. So that's what I see can happen. And if you only see the tragic part, you see people in the emergency room or in the hospital with all their complications or you see people who are destroying things in their lives, you feel hopeless. But you never really get to see all the people that do well. And that's one of the nice things about our addiction care system that we have is that we get to see people on both sides, and we're not trying to sugarcoat the tragedies that can happen, but we definitely know people can get better and live productive lives.
Addiction is often more than strictly behavioral or psychological. It can be genetic, social, and in the case of Opioid Use Disorder, the regular use of the drugs can change the very physiology of the brain. Learn what addiction really is and how we can better understand, treat, and prevent the condition through this understanding. |
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Women More Likely to Experience Drug AddictionApproximately 4.5 million women in the U.S. have… +3 More
March 22, 2018
Womens Health
Dr. Jones: In the tragedy of the opioid epidemic, a new group of Americans has emerged as the most likely to die of prescription opioid overdose -- middle-aged women. These are mothers and grandmothers. How can this be? This is Dr. Kirtly Jones from Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Utah Health, and this is The Scope.
Announcer: Covering all aspects of women's health, this is "The Seven Domains of Women's Health" with Dr. Kirtly Jones on The Scope.
Dr. Jones: Women are the fastest growing segment of alcohol and drug users in the United States. Up to 4.5 million women over the age of 12 in the U.S. have a substance use disorder, and 3.5 million misuse prescription drugs, 3.1 million regularly use illicit drugs. That would be heroin or marijuana in states that don't allow it. Each year, over 200,000 American women die as a result of alcoholism and drug dependence, with more than 4 million women in the need of treatment for their addiction. Men are more likely to use opioids, including heroin and illegal narcotics, than women and are more likely to die of narcotics overdoses related to illegal substances than women. But when the issue is prescription opioids, the kind you get from your doctor, the problem is shifted more to women.
The 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated that 6.5 million Americans misused or abused prescription drugs within the last year, and more than half of them were female. Women are more likely to experience chronic pain and anxiety than men, and are more likely to seek help from clinicians for these problems, and are more likely to use a combination of opioids and valium-like drugs than men, and that combination can be lethal. They're more likely to get and use prescribed medications, such as opioid pain relievers, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers than men. And middle-aged women are more likely to have chronic pain and anxiety than young women.
As a clinician, I must say that I used to think my patients, particularly those that were older in midlife, were older and wiser and were too smart to use or abuse prescription drugs, and I was wrong. And all of us who care for women need to take special care now. More women have died each year from drug overdoses than from motor vehicle accidents since 2007. Drugs given to treat anxiety, called benzodiazepines, are often combined with prescription opioids, and the combination is particularly dangerous and causes many of the deaths and emergency room visits related to opioid overdose.
According to a recent study by the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, the group most at risk for prescription opioid overdose is made up of white, middle aged women, not the ones you'd think, huh? The study came from examining over 10 years' worth of health records comprising some 1.2 million patients and had the goal of predicting which people were at most risk of overdose from prescription opioids, like hydrocodone and OxyContin. Some of their findings were the average overdose patient in women was 52 years old. The majority of overdose patients were unmarried, unemployed females, but they probably weren't unemployed before their addiction problems started.
Almost 10% of patients who overdosed died within a year of that incident, meaning if you overdosed once but got resuscitated, got helped, 10% of those women die in a year. One reason why this high rate of increase for women is because the Centers for Disease Control reported that women may be more likely than men to engage in doctor shopping. Doctor shopping is when women actively seek out multiple types of prescription drugs from multiple providers. So they go to one doctor for one prescription and another doctor for another.
There's evidence that women become addicted to prescriptions such as narcotics and benzos much more quickly than men. This has been found for alcohol and nicotine as well, and it's not just that women are smaller because pound for pound, women became drunk faster than men and addicted more easily. It's probably a combination of biology and psychology of women.
This trend is alarming as women progress faster than men into addiction even when using a similar or lesser amount of substances, and ultimately suffer more health-related consequences. And while addiction is an equal opportunity disease, women become addicted differently, starting for different reasons, progress faster, recover differently, and relapse for different reasons than men. Women have a higher percent of body fat and lower percent of body water than men, both of which can affect how the drug is metabolized, and women are 70% more likely to suffer from depression than men. They're twice as likely to struggle with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder due to sexual abuse, violence, or childhood trauma.
So what should we be doing? As clinicians, we should be very careful in how we prescribe narcotics and benzodiazepines and sleeping pills. We should understand that women become addicted more quickly than men. After surgery or delivery, we should send women home with only the amount of narcotics needed and should be tailored to each woman, and we should be checking the prescribed medication databases to see if our patients have been getting these drugs from other clinicians if they're doctor shopping. We should be using alternative therapies for pain, anxiety, and insomnia where possible.
As caregivers, we need to be on the alert that our mothers, our sisters, our friends, and our daughters are in trouble. Changes in behavior, withdrawal from family, changes in sleeping patterns, these aren't necessarily signs of alcohol or narcotics addiction. It could be depression or anxiety, but the woman needs help. As women, we need to do our best to avoid the use of narcotics and anti-anxiety drugs like benzodiazepines or sleeping pills.
Anyone can become addicted in a matter of just a few days. If you've had an injury or surgery, use narcotic pain relievers first if possible. If you're seeking help for anxiety, try behavioral approaches first. And if you have problems with sleeping, behavioral approaches work better than sleeping pills in the long run. And if you believe that you have a problem, then you probably do. Tell someone, get professional help, there is a road back, and thank you for joining us on The Scope.
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