Most people are aware that our country has a drug problem. I mean if you’re of a certain age you grew up with the DARE program and a conscious understanding of the term “war on drugs”. The problem is that not all drugs people struggle with are illegal drugs, and in many cases they are not drugs that are illegally obtained either. Often, it’s folks who were prescribed an opioid, and never intended to misuse or abuse the drug, but it happens anyway. One of my favorite bands, The Hold Steady, describes addiction with this lyric in the song “Hot Soft Light”: “…it came on hot and soft and then it tightened up its tentacles”.
How many people use a legal opioid and have it tighten up its tentacles on them? In a 2015 study in the journal Pain, it was found that 21 to 29% of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them. That is a significant number, not just because its big, but because the abuse is so dangerous. Per the CDC:
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Around 66% of the more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in 2016 involved an opioid.
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On average, 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.
This is a serious problem. Not only are opioids dangerous on their own, but they can lead to other issues. In a 2014 article in JAMA Psychiatry found that about 80% of heroin users first misused prescribed opioids.
The answer is clear: the best bet is to avoid prescription opioids, if possible. What about those in chronic pain? I submit, chiropractic. A 2018 article in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found that New Hampshire adults “with office visits for non-cancer low back pain, the likelihood of filling a prescription for an opioid analgesic was significantly lower for recipients of services delivered by doctors of chiropractic compared with non-recipients.” Basically, it appears, but needs more studying, a correlation between using chiropractic and needing less opioids. Thus, limiting all the risks associated with opioid use. Chiropractic has long been known to help with a variety of issues and pain, but now we are seeing that it may protect us from more than we ever knew.
