Her friends and parents quickly noticed her symptoms — notably drowsiness and nodding off. Eventually, she pursued Vicodin addiction rehab and received the necessary treatment to begin a life of sobriety. The best way to prevent hydrocodone addiction is to take the drug exactly as your doctor prescribes. It’s also important to record your pain in a diary while you take it. Review your pain diary from time to time to see how you’re progressing. If your doctor prescribes hydrocodone for you, you can take steps to avoid serious complications from hydrocodone addiction.
Vicodin Addiction: Symptoms, Overdose, and Treatment
Hydrocodone can also create a euphoric high and a reward response in the brain. This is largely because when hydrocodone binds to opioid receptor sites, it can trigger a release of the feel-good chemical dopamine. Some people abuse Vicodin to achieve the high it creates, and the increased production of dopamine causes a chemical imbalance to occur. Long-term abuse of hydrocodone not only changes the way the brain functions but can have lasting effects on mood and thought patterns.
Adverse Effects & Health Risks of Hydrocodone Misuse
Receive free access to exclusive content, a personalized homepage based on your interests, and a weekly newsletter with the topics of your choice. Ask your pharmacist where to find boxes where you can drop off unused medication. Your pharmacist also might vicodin addiction have special medication-deactivating bags for pill disposal. Don’t leave opioid bottles on counters or in places where others could easily get them. Plan ahead for where you will keep them so they are out of reach of children, vulnerable adults and pets.
Is Vicodin Addictive?
- Some opioid users who believe they need a bigger supply find illegal ways to get opioids or start using heroin.
- For example, someone who regularly abuses Vicodin may experience problems with their relationships or legal and financial problems.
- Because of the risk of opioid misuse, it’s often hard to get your healthcare professional to raise your dose or renew your prescription.
- If you feel you’re starting to crave the drug even at times when you feel little or no pain, talk with your doctor immediately.
- When quitting the use of Vicodin suddenly, the body goes through withdrawal and experiences forceful and uncomfortable side effects rather quickly.
Hydrocodone, the main ingredient in Vicodin, was first discovered in the 1920s. Since hydrocodone has been circulating for the past century, people have learned that mixing it with other drugs, such as acetaminophen, can increase its strength and effects. Unless that person is getting that drug to increase that dopamine, the brain’s not going to be satisfied. Instead of feeling this euphoria or this high feeling, a person is just going to use just to not go through withdrawal.
Vicodin Addiction: Abuse, Symptoms, Treatment and Recovery
Combining an opioid medication (Vicodin) with a benzodiazepine (Valium) is highly dangerous and can result in coma or death. Vicodin carries an FDA-boxed warning against taking the drug with benzodiazepines for this reason. Additionally, the combination can cause drowsiness, dizziness, confusion and slurred speech.
Immediate Effects Of Hydrocodone Misuse And Abuse Include:
Reserve concomitant prescribing for patients with inadequate alternative treatment options. Concomitant use of benzodiazepines and opioids may result in profound sedation, respiratory depression, coma, and death. While hydrocodone is typically taken orally, some who abuse the drug crush the pills and either snort or inject the powder.
Withdrawal symptoms for each person will vary, but doctors can prescribe medication to ease the severity of those symptoms. Heroin is a highly addictive drug made from morphine, which comes from opium poppy plants. Some prescription opioid pain medicines have effects similar to heroin. Research suggests that misuse of these drugs may open the door to https://ecosoberhouse.com/ heroin use. Now, the medications, at least for opioid use disorder, come into effect because they satisfy that opioid receptor partially so that the person can engage in this therapy. These medications, such as buprenorphine, buprenorphine, naloxone, help satisfy that receptor so that the person doesn’t have this craving to go out and use again.
Vicodin Addiction, Abuse, And Treatment
Please consult your doctor — even if they prescribed both together — before ingesting Vicodin and Valium. After an intense surgery or injury, many doctors may prescribe a narcotic painkiller called Vicodin. As a Schedule II controlled substance, Vicodin has a high risk of being misused. Misusers can quickly become dependent on it, paving the way for addiction to develop. If an individual feels that Vicodin is essential to function during everyday life, an addiction may have developed. Although Vicodin has a legitimate medical purpose, the prescription narcotic is dangerous to those who may take it for the euphoric high it can provide.
These side effects may go away during treatment as your body adjusts to the medicine. Also, your health care professional may be able to tell you about ways to prevent or reduce some of these side effects. Vicodin is a powerful pain reliever that combines hydrocodone, which is an opioid and acetaminophen. Hydrocodone binds to opioid receptor sites in the central nervous system and changes the brain’s emotional response to pain.
- During this time, you can practice new skills to manage pain and other long-term symptoms too.
- This could occur even if you have taken acetaminophen in the past and had no reaction.
- You might feel as though you’re watching the person throw his or her life away.
- Generally, doctors may decide to write a hydrocodone (brand name Vicodin®) prescription to treat short-term pain following dental surgery or for injury-related pain.
- Call your doctor at once if you have nausea, pain in your upper stomach, itching, loss of appetite, dark urine, clay-colored stools, or jaundice (yellowing of your skin or eyes).
They will use resources to get money to pay for these drugs in ways that they wouldn’t have before. We’re not talking about moral choices or I choose to behave this way, but they’re a victim of the brain who says, I must get this drug and I will do anything that I need to do to get this drug. But we recognize the more we’ve studied it that it really has some biological drivers.