Hydrocodone Addiction Help
As the active analgesic agent in countless prescription drug painkillers, hydrocodone provides patients with pain relief through a series of interactions with brain chemicals and pain receptors. Included in prescription drugs such as Vicodin, Lortab and Vicoprofen, hydrocodone can quickly lead to addiction if use persists or escalates. Among opioid drugs, hydrocodone has become one of the most abused in the nation, involved in the more drug-related incidents than any other drug of its type, according to 2008 reports compiled by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Despite its high potential for addiction, hydrocodone has remained a popular choice for pain relief by prescribing physicians. In fact, the Department of Justice’s Office of Diversion Control reported that merely for the year 2007, poison control centers across the country fielded nearly 11,000 instances where individuals had become exposed to the drug unintentionally, many within their own households.
Factors Involved in Hydrocodone Abuse and Addiction
As an analgesic and opiate agonist, hydrocodone works to block the reception of pain messages sent out by the spinal cord and brain stem. However, it’s hydrocodone’s effects on the brain’s neurochemicals that causes users to experience the drug’s “high” — particularly as it acts on serotonin and dopamine. While the individual is under the influence of hydrocodone, the brain experiences a flood of these chemical messengers, allowing the user to undergo sensations of calm, happiness and affability. Once hydrocodone has exited the system and allowed an individual to temporarily return to sobriety, feelings of exhaustion and depression can set in, as the brain experiences a depletion of serotonin and dopamine. The user experiences this chemical imbalance as a desire to re-use hydrocodone in a phenomenon known as an opiate craving.
Hydrocodone Tolerance and Opiate Withdrawal
In combination with the forces of opiate craving and drug-induced euphoria, hydrocodone can also elicit addiction through its quickly building drug tolerance in users. Over time, an individual begins to increase their dose (sometimes, under physician instruction) in order to achieve the drug’s analgesic effects. In a similar manner, the euphoric effects of hydrocodone also lessen with time and use, causing addicted individuals to increase their intake. Additionally, the symptoms associated with the sharp removal of hydrocodone from the system serve to dissuade users from staying abstinent too long. As a form of opiate withdrawal, hydrocodone detoxification can come with a host of symptoms, ranging from digestive problems to convulsions and hallucinatory experiences. When hydrocodone withdrawal is attempted alone, users can incur damage to the vital organs, relapse and overdose, experience coma and even die.
