The threat of painkiller addiction can be very real for anyone who has suffered an injury and is suffering from chronic pain. Many doctors do not consider the possibility of addiction and will just prescribe addictive, opiate painkillers to people without considering the consequences. This can lead to problems down the road and possibly even result in drug addiction.



The problem with using opiates to treat pain is that they do not really treat the pain at all. In fact, what they do is to simply dull the brain. There are pain signals that travel through the body to the brain, telling the brain "Hey! I'm hurting! There is a problem here!" The narcotic medications do not actually help your physical pain in any way at the source, and they don't really divert the pain signals in your body either. What addictive narcotics do is they simply dull the brain so that it no longer minds the pain signals that it is receiving from the source of your pain. The effect is a bit like making your brain drunk without getting your entire body drunk. This is similar to putting a rag in an alarm clock when it comes to silencing the pain.

So narcotic pain pills (these are the kind that can cause addiction) do not actually reduce our pain, all they really do is dull our senses in the brain so that the mind does not worry about the pain signals as much. Other medications, such as nsaids like Ibuprofen, reduce inflammation and can actually reduce the level of pain in your body right at the source.

So if you become addicted to painkillers, then you will have to figure out a number of things in order to recover. The first step is to get your body clean and free from the chemicals that you are hooked on. Coming off addictive painkillers can be really nasty, so it is advisable that you go to a treatment center that has a detoxification area so that you can be medically supervised during withdrawal. Most drug rehabs will give you something to help with the withdrawal from the narcotics so that you are not so miserable.

The second thing you will have to do in order to overcome painkiller addiction is to find a new way to manage your chronic pain. As mentioned above, there are alternative medications that are not addictive that can actually work better than opiates in some cases, because they do more right at the source of the pain. In addition to this, you might try a pain clinic, where they can treat your pain locally on a daily basis. There are also things such as TENS units and holistic remedies as well that might be able to help you manage your pain without opiates.

The final piece of the puzzle when overcoming a drug addiction is to create a new life for yourself without chemicals. Yes, that is a huge challenge and the idea of doing so is really a tremendous effort. If you have been addicted to painkillers for a long time then you are going to have to focus on your recovery and learning a new way to live for a long time as well. We did not become addicted overnight so it takes time to build up a successful recovery.