WEBVTT - How Many People Take and Misuse Prescription Opioids?

0:00:02.080 --> 0:00:07.200
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,

0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:11.840
<v Speaker 1>it's Christian seger In. For the first time in US history,

0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:16.480
<v Speaker 1>more people died in a single year from drug overdoses

0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:20.639
<v Speaker 1>than in car accidents, and the majority of them didn't

0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:23.439
<v Speaker 1>fall victim to the sort of drugs you would think

0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:27.680
<v Speaker 1>around Thirty three thousand of these deaths resulted from the

0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:33.280
<v Speaker 1>misuse of drugs that were manufactured legally in shiny code

0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:37.720
<v Speaker 1>enforced factories. And they've got names you've probably seen before

0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:42.040
<v Speaker 1>in the medicine cabinets of your friends and family. Percocet, vicodin,

0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:48.720
<v Speaker 1>and OxyContin. They are opioid painkillers. Recent survey results published

0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:51.760
<v Speaker 1>in the Annals of Internal Medicine shed some light on

0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:55.480
<v Speaker 1>why opioid misuse is becoming such a problem in the

0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:59.520
<v Speaker 1>United States. According to the team of researchers at the

0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.720
<v Speaker 1>U S Department of Health and Human Services, ninety one

0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:09.360
<v Speaker 1>point eight million Americans used prescription opioids in twenty fifteen.

0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:14.240
<v Speaker 1>That is more than a third of the country's adult population,

0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.440
<v Speaker 1>and more than eleven point five million Americans reported they

0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:23.200
<v Speaker 1>missed used them, meaning they took them without a valid prescription.

0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:27.839
<v Speaker 1>That's a full four point six percent of our entire

0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.800
<v Speaker 1>adult population, and one point nine million of those people

0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:36.800
<v Speaker 1>admitted to having a use disorder. The National Survey on

0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:41.640
<v Speaker 1>Drug Use and Health is conducted annually, but fifteen was

0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:46.840
<v Speaker 1>the first year researchers included questions specifically about the use

0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:52.600
<v Speaker 1>of prescription opioids. The team surveyed fifty one thousand, two

0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:58.400
<v Speaker 1>hundred non institutionalized civilian adults from all fifty states, and

0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:03.320
<v Speaker 1>what they found was a arming for starters. Sixty of

0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:08.800
<v Speaker 1>the survey participants who reported misusing prescription opioids said their

0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:13.200
<v Speaker 1>motivation for taking the drugs was pain management, and of

0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:19.239
<v Speaker 1>the survey participants who reported misuse in nearly sixty said

0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:24.040
<v Speaker 1>the drugs weren't prescribed to them and said they first

0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.960
<v Speaker 1>acquired the drugs from family or friends. Now, while pop

0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:32.120
<v Speaker 1>culture can conjure images of back alley deals, this misuse

0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:34.800
<v Speaker 1>can be as simple as a mother giving her daughter

0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:39.320
<v Speaker 1>a pill to help ease some temporary intense pain, or

0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:43.040
<v Speaker 1>a college student, for instance, getting a pill from a roommate.

0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.400
<v Speaker 1>Although the investigators expected the prescription rates for opioid pain

0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:51.200
<v Speaker 1>killers to be high, they concluded that doctors are prescribing

0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:56.400
<v Speaker 1>too much medicine and providing pain management drugs for excessive

0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:00.280
<v Speaker 1>amounts of time. Their suggestion is cutting back on the

0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:04.800
<v Speaker 1>amount and frequency of prescriptions to try to help lower

0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:12.360
<v Speaker 1>the number of overdoses. Today's episode of brain Stuff was

0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:16.120
<v Speaker 1>written by Jeslyn Shields, produced by Dylan Fagan, and for

0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:19.560
<v Speaker 1>more on this and other topics, please visit us at

0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:21.160
<v Speaker 1>how Stuff Works dot mus