Those who are struggling with substance abuse addiction should seek some form of help or rehab in order to get over their problem.  Substance abuse can affect people in so many different ways–for example, the person who finds themselves drinking an extra glass of wine each night, and slowly sees this snowballing into greater and greater quantities, or the person who hurts their arm and gets put on pain medication that seems to make them feel so good when they take just a little bit extra.  These problems are sneaky and creep into a person’s life when they are least expecting it.  It can also happen at any time, even after a person has reached middle age or their senior years, when they might believe that they are immune to substance abuse addictions.

So let’s say that a person has suffered an injury and they find themselves taking too much of their pain medicine, such as Vicodin.  They might go back to their doctor and complain that they still have a lot of pain and their doctor might give them an opiate based drug that is even stronger, or they might simply increase the dose.  Whatever.  The idea is that the addiction has now kicked in, and the unsuspecting addict is already raising the stakes by increasing the amount or the strength of the drug.  Tolerance has developed and the person has to take more and more of the drug to feel as good as they did previously.

The person still has pain issues and even though they may be taking more medication than what is prescribed, they are no longer able to medicate the pain effectively because they have abused the medicine.  They took too much and felt high from it, and now they cannot effectively manage their pain with “normal” amounts.  At this point they might look into getting some opiate addiction treatment.  They could go to a drug rehab, check into a detox unit, and get off of all the opiate medications entirely.  They would obviously still need to find a way to manage their pain at this point, which could be done through a competent doctor who is knowledgeable about addiction.  There are ways to manage chronic pain without resorting to opiates, you just have to find a pain clinic or a doctor who is willing to explore the options.  Not every doctor has the time, patience, or knowledge to do this with an addict who suffers from substance abuse issues.