Assignment 16: Elizabeth Piper

Brett Favre. A legend in the football world. He will forever be known as one of the best quarterbacks and will be immortalized in the pro football hall of fame. But there is much more to the story than just his fame and success as a football star. As many of you know football is a very rough sport that results in many injuries. Favre was no stranger to this, throughout his career he had a plethora surgeries and injuries and was almost always in pain. To cope with this, he was prescribed opioids like Vicodin. This drug gives off a sensation of pure pleasure and you feel warm and tingly after taking it. In one word it is addicting. After a while taking just one pill doesn’t give off the same euphoric effect because you become immune. You start taking more and more. This is exactly what Brett Favre did. At one point he was taking up to 15 pills a day. A bottle that was supposed to last a month was 30 pills and he was going through this in 2 days. The final straw was when he was in the hospital for surgery and he had a seizure due to all of the painkillers in his system. Luckily, he survived but others have not been so lucky. It is an epidemic.

          Today prescription drugs are handed out like candy, some doctors will willingly just prescribe pain killers to a patient if they just simply ask. Professional athletes are also just being handed these drugs so they can play for longer and organizations such as the NFL and NBA can continue to make money. As well as athletes, the younger generation are taking these prescription drugs as a fun activity to do with friends. As you can clearly see this wave of prescription drug abuse is affecting everyone in the country.

          From 1999 to 2001 the number of prescriptions pertaining to opioids and pain killers rose by 20 million and in 2003 nearly 200 million prescriptions for opioids were filled. This is a staggering number and it is still increasing today. In the early 1900s there used to be legislation that made it illegal to give opioid medications to patients who claim they suffer from chronic pain.

          In the 1980s there was a call for change and opioids were becoming more mainstream and accepted in the medical field. Dr. William Hurwitz is a prime example of a doctor who abused his power of giving out prescriptions. In 2004 he was convicted by the government for excessively prescribing addictive opioid pain medication. Some of his patients ended up abusing the medication and became addicted or they sold the pills on the black market.

          Now this doctor claims that his patients had chronic pain and he just took them all at their word and just openly gave them medicine. His method was to just give them a bigger dosage whenever they said that the medicine started to not work and the pain was still constant. Now this was a big mistake. Hurwitz shouldn’t have just given every patient what they wanted just if they asked. Now the real problem is that there is no way to measure pain. We do not have any special machines to tell us how much pain someone is in. This means that doctors just had to go at the word of the people. But if your patient was to tell you they were in pain you should do some digging. Ask them questions to try to verify whether their claims are true. Rather than just openly asking about the pain. This would hopefully drop the number of patients who have access to opioids just for the purpose of misusing them.

          From the normal everyday citizen to famous athletes and celebrities abuse of prescription pain killers is everywhere. Especially in the NFL, many athletes get hurt during the season, this causes the NFL to lose money. So, to cope with this, the NFL has been known to give its athletes bottle upon bottles of opioids. Their thought process is if they are constantly on pain killers then they won’t feel pain and then they can play even longer therefore making more revenue. In a study done by ESPN, it was found that 63% of players who was on prescription medication said they got it from a non-medical source. Players said they would often get them outside the locker room or even in it at times by other players and members of the NFL. It is now the norm just to take these pills that no one really finds fault in it till later when these retired players become addicted and start to have mental health issues and their quality of life is deteriorating.

          These athletes’ lives are publicized in the news and you often hear stories of athletes and celebrities who have overdosed or got seriously hurt through misusing prescription drugs. Everyone can see these stories and it is affecting our children today. Many adolescents today find it “cool” to misuse prescription drugs.  They enjoy the high they get when taking it and it is relatively easy to get. They view these drugs as safe and perfectly legal. Their thought process is that the medication comes from a doctor so how could it be bad for you. Most students never consider using heroin because it is perceived as dangerous but these prescription drugs are perfectly okay.

          This shows a lack in education. Adolescents have not been properly informed of the impact of becoming addicted to pain killers. One of the biggest aids to in students getting a hold of medicine is parents. They often leave the medicine cabinet unguarded which leaves it open for kids to take what they please. Parents are not aware of the epidemic and they just openly leave unused medications around. We need to raise their awareness. They will openly give their kids different medication and they will not closely monitor them taking their medicine so it is easy for them to abuse it or sell it to their friends and other students.

          In my school experience we have always had assemblies about saying no to drugs. But never once have they mentioned prescription drugs. Yes, we learn not to use heroin or cocaine among other illegal drugs but what about the legal ones. It is so much easier to get ahold of these and they can have detrimental effects.

          We need to stop the spread of opioid addiction. We need to inform the population of the harm that misusing these medications cause. Everywhere today we see commercials and advertisement about how harmful tobacco products are. You can never escape these. This is what we need to do for misusing prescription drugs. Today, people are so willing to just openly take prescription drugs and abusing them. We need to just say no.

Works Cited

Barr, John. “OTL: Painkiller misuse numbs NFL pain.” ESPN, http://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=110128/painkillersnews. Accessed 25 July 2017

“Brett Favre Opens Up About Painkiller Addiction | Promises.” Drug and Addiction Treatment Centers | Promises, Promises Treatment Centers, 5 Aug. 2016, www.promises.com/articles/brett-favre-opens-up-about-painkiller-addiction-on-eve-of-hall-of-fame-ceremony/.

Kelley, Steve. NFL Prescription Drug Abuse. 22 May 2014. http://www.gocomics.com/stevekelley/2014/5/22. Accessed 25 July 2017

Marson, Eve, director. Dr. Feelgood. Asylum Entertainment, 2016.

Schachter, Ron. “A New Prescription for Fighting Drug Abuse.” District Administration, vol. 48, no. 2, Feb. 2012, pp. 41-46. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=7140197&site=ehost-live. Accessed 25 July 2017

Taylor, Trusandra. "Targeting Prescription Drug Abuse--A New Federal Initiative." Behavioral Health Management, vol. 24, no. 4, Jul/Aug2004, pp. 37-40. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=15027162&site=ehost-live. Accessed 25 July 2017.