by Jay Orcutt

Created on: December 10, 2008   Last Updated: December 14, 2008

Herion isn't just a needle in a junkey's arm anymore. You won't always see addicts sitting in the streets, or sitting in alleys around major cities either. There are a lot of ways to get the same high you can get on herion without ever touching a needle or shooting up.

Oxies are the biggest drug on the market for herione addicts now. They are highly addictive, and once you get hooked it's very hard to get clean again. There are a lot of people who won't put a needle in their arm but who definitely will pop a pill, just to get the same high affect.

You can get hooked on oxycotin and oxycodine in a lot of different ways. One of the major ways addicts get started is if a doctor puts them on the pills because of an injury or illness. The longer they take the drugs the harder it is to get back off of them. The situation really gets out of control after a while. A person who is hooked on these drugs goes through withdrawals when they don't have them. Once they realize how bad the withdrawals can be, they start to live in fear of not having the drugs. They may tell the doctor they still feel bad, even if the pain they had at first has completely gone away. They may also be afraid to talk to the doctor about the addiction, for fear of the doctor pulling them off the drug. Again, this happens not because they are bad people, but because they know how bad the withdrawals will be if that happens, and they live in fear of it.

This kind of addiction isn't limited to younger people, or to poor people, or to any certain type of people at all. It can happen to anybody who starts taking these pills because of a real medical need. Once you have taken the medication for a while your body and your mind get used to having it. You also start to crave it more and more. You can end up taking more than you were prescribed by the doctor, because you also build up a tolerance to these drugs over time. It takes more and more of them to get the affect you first had.

The biggest concern is that every doctor in every doctors office around the country can prescribe these kinds of medications. The number of doctors who are actually trained to help people get off these drugs doesn't even come close to the number of doctors who can give them out. This is a huge problem. When any doctor can give out medications that cause such a serious addiction, but few can deal with the problems caused by the meds being doled out, everyone should be concerned. In order for an addicted person to get off oxies or other drugs of the like they either need to go to a detox center, or see a doctor who can prescribe other drugs to help them through the withdrawals. Doctors able to prescribe drugs like Suboxone and Methadone are few and far between. They have to go through an extended training period, and are limited in the number of patients they are allowed to treat. This creates a waiting list for addicts seeking treatment, and a huge gap in the number of people who need help, and the number of those who are able to get the help they need.

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