Opioid Use Disorder > Fact Sheets > Yale Medicine

Having certain physical health conditions, such as chronic pain, can increase people’s use of opioids and the eventual development of OUD. Access to opioids is a particularly significant environmental risk factor. The availability and volume of prescription opioids, especially in North America, Western Europe and Australia, make them easier to access.

Strategies to Prevent Opioid Misuse, Abuse, and Diversion That May Also Reduce the Associated Costs

There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. This information provides a general overview and may not apply to everyone. Talk to your family doctor to find out if this information applies to you and to get more information on this subject. If you or a loved one is ready to seek assistance for an addiction, the first step is to find a physician or other health professional who can help. This sort of compulsive use can lead to tolerance and dependence, the hallmarks of addiction. Buprenorphine is a medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat Opioid Use Disorder (OUD).

How is opioid use disorder diagnosed?

In response to this public health crisis, a number of policy and educational initiatives have been implemented to help providers and patients, respectively, prescribe and use opioids more responsibly. Treatment research on opioid use disorders was largely focused on intravenous heroin use until 5–10 years ago, so studies focusing specifically on prescription opioid use disorders remain limited. Studies focusing primarily on heroin suggest that replacement therapies, coupled with psychosocial treatment, are the best treatment option, although treatment access remains an issue and treatment signs of opioid addiction utilization rates are low. Additional research focusing on the development and evaluation of treatments specific to prescription opioid use disorders and their common comorbidities (e.g., chronic pain, depression) are critically needed. Healthcare organisations, clinicians, policymakers, researchers, local law enforcement, educators and lay people can all contribute to efforts to prevent and treat opioid misuse. Healthcare organisations, clinicians and law enforcement officials can increase access to and distribution of potentially life-saving resources such as Naloxone.

• The signs and symptoms of opioid addiction are similar to opioid side effects.
• Statistics highlight the severity of the epidemic, with the National Institute on Drug Abuse reporting that more than 2 million Americans abuse opioids and that more than 90 Americans die by opioid overdose every day, on average.
• Health information on safe opioid use could also be provided to patients.
• Doctors often use it along with the drug naloxone (a combination that can be called Bunavail, Suboxone, or Zubsolv) to prevent relapse.
• But stopping “cold turkey” is so uncomfortable and triggers powerful cravings for opioids that, in most cases, it results in relapse to opioid use to relieve the withdrawal symptoms.

Opioids and Opioid Use Disorder (OUD)

• You should always talk to your doctor before you stop using a drug, even an opioid.
• Evidence-based approaches to treating opioid use disorder include medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and combining medications with behavioral therapy.
• Most young people have no idea what medications they’re taking and which ones may cause serious problems — even death — if used with other drugs or alcohol.
• If there are symptoms of opioid use disorder, relevant to indicated prevention, clinicians should assess the patient more thoroughly or refer them to the proper mental health source for treatment that includes pharmacological-assisted therapy.
• As more people misuse opioids, more women are misusing opioids during pregnancy.
• Early identification of prescription drug abuse and early intervention may prevent the problem from turning into an addiction.

Opioid overdose can occur even with prescription opioid pain relievers and medications used in treating SUD such as methadone and buprenorphine. In addition, individuals using naltrexone for MOUD have a reduced tolerance to opioids, and therefore, using the same, or even lower doses of opioids used in the past, can cause life-threating consequences. These medicines manage pain well and can help boost your quality of life when you follow your doctor’s directions on taking them. It’s possible but not common to become addicted to or dependent on opioids when you use them for a short time or under a doctor’s close watch. But when you take them for a long time, they can lead to drug abuse, dependence, and addiction. Yes, repeated misuse of prescription opioids can lead to a substance use disorder (SUD), a medical illness which ranges from mild to severe and from temporary to chronic.

Opioid Use Disorder

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Physical and sexual abuse

• Still, much is left to be done to prevent those at risk for developing opioid use disorder, and to help those that are already affected.
• McLellan (2002) argues for a continued care approach in substance abuse rehabilitation, just as with chronic diseases, rather than treating these disorders as ones that can be fixed in one single treatment programme.
• Validated screening measures include the Screener and Opioid Assessment for Patients With Pain (24) and the Opioid Risk Tool (25).
• Overall, 38% of any type of cancer patients reported experiencing moderate to severe pain in a recent meta-analysis.
• They were also more likely to have a partner that was also an intravenous drug user (Draus & Carlson, 2006; Young et al., 2014).
• Estimates of injecting users who facilitate the initiation into injection of others range from 17 to 47% (Bryant, & Treloar, 2008; Crofts, Louie, Rosenthal, & Jolley, 1996).