The Epidemic of Opioids

In the advanced society of today, teenagers have been increasing their substance abuse of various medical drugs, including opioids. In fact, many teenagers have first started this addiction due to doctor’s prescriptions. I had found this very shocking because I know that I go to the doctor’s office plenty, specially when I had a extremely fun visit to get my wisdom teeth out. Yeah....not. According to a Pubmed article, opioid drugs like buprenorphine and naltrexone are on the increase for opioid disorder usage among 13 to 25 years olds. Opioids happen to impact youth going through adulthood, as we are still developing our brain. As a result we are more highly prone to do stupid stuff like abusing drugs. Did you know that it is not until around the age of 25 that the brain is fully developed? It does not help that the stress from the overload of work we get from school, the problems at home, and dealing with relationships all pile together to add to chance of abusing drugs. But although opioids may make you not feel as much pain, it has a dark side as they are very addictive, making people dependent on it. This both drains the money you have in your pocket and drastically decreases your health.

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So I know I was confused with what opioids exactly were, so I found that it consists of morphine, oxycodone and a lot of other confusingly complex medical terms. So basically morphine is a “natural” opioid that is used to treat moderate to severe feelings of pain. This is used in doctor’s offices especially in the case of wisdom teeth. I bet you guys have seen hilarious videos of people doing loopy things after receiving morphine from their wisdom teeth extraction. This is only an option as instead of being prescribed an opioid (which is also known as a narcotic) you can use pain killers like tylenol to treat pain only when recommended. I had did this in the case of my wisdom teeth, and it turned out to be very effective. Oxycodone is a semi-synthetic that is created in the lab and has that same use as morphine. Apparently, they both have side effects of being constipated and severely drowsy. Imagine being in school. Yes, not exactly the ideal situation.

Overall, I hope this article helped you guys being more informed about current events in society today. Stay tuned for future articles!

#opiod #teendrugabuse #drugs #overdose #addition #currentevents