There is an epidemic of opiate use and opiate abuse that has been sweeping our nation for the past decade. It is just now finally starting to come to the forefront of our national and local news, but the opiate epidemic did not just pop up. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that the United States accounts for 75% of the consumption of the world’s prescription drugs despite only accounting for 5% of the world’s population. Since 1999, death rates from prescription opioid pain relievers have quadrupled in the U.S.
As the use of opiates has become more prevalent due to physicians writing more and more prescriptions to manage patient’s pain, so has addiction rates to opiates increased. Most of those who find themselves addicted to opiates do not fit into our commonly held stereotypes of drug addicts. Opiate addiction is not an inner city problem. It is more common in the suburbs and rural communities.
The addiction often starts innocently enough. Someone is in a car accident and suffers injuries. For another it begins with an accident at work. It could be a degenerative disc in their spine. There are countless causes of the sort of pain that drives someone to their physician for pain management options. Often times, the simplest and fastest solution for the physician is to reach for their prescription pad.
It is not that opiate pain relievers are inherently bad. They are not, and for the right patients they are a viable solution. However, they are being prescribed more than ever and becoming the standard in pain management. The problem from there is that their chemistry and how they affect our body makes them highly addictive. The body also builds up a tolerance to them, so over time higher doses are necessary to achieve the same relief.
When they cannot acquire the higher doses from their physician, they often seek out other means, including visiting multiple physicians, buying them off the street, or turning to less expensive alternatives like heroin. This is where the addiction typically starts to spin out of control.
Why don’t they just stop taking them? Mostly because the withdrawal is so uncomfortable and painful that it drives people to do whatever they can to keep taking the opiates instead of stopping.
For those seeking help, there are options out there. Many detox centers and physicians will prescribe a synthetic opioid like methadone or Suboxone to the addict and try to wean them off of it. This practice is coming under increasingly more critique. To many it is simply trading one addiction for another addiction. These synthetic opioids can also be dangerous, as they stay in the body longer which makes it easier to overdose on them. In fact, methadone overdoses are becoming more prevalent than heroin overdoses.
Many people are turning to home remedies for opiate withdrawal instead. There are many individual vitamins and supplements out there that people will recommend for relieving some of the individual symptoms of opiate withdrawal. There are also combinations of these that people have put together to use, such as the Thomas Recipe. The most viable solution for an at home remedy is the all-in-one supplements for opiate withdrawal. These formulas and supplements attempt to combine many different ingredients into one for convenience, but more importantly for a higher effectiveness in relieving the many symptoms of opiate withdrawal.
We will highlight the more popular methods and products here to help those who are seeking out a home remedy to ease their opiate withdrawal.