When someone first starts taking prescription pain medications of a narcotic nature, there is usually an initiating even,t related to pain. That event can be many different things, from a dental visit to a car accident. In many, if not most cases, the use of the medication is stopped after an interval and things “get back to normal”. However, sometimes the use of a narcotic pain medication can become tied to a person’s own sense of “happiness” and may trigger an addictive response, primarily due to a particular chemistry in the patient’s own body, which is not universally present in the entire population. When this addiction happens, things can quickly spiral out of control, as the press has so dramatically presented for many years.
But who or what is to blame for this crisis? And who is trying to treat it and what means will they use? Of course, these issue are complicated, but there are clinicians who are at the front lines of the fight to reverse these general trends. One of them is Dr. Salvador Ceniceros, a psychiatrist at the Jordan Valley Community Health Center. He has worked in the treatment of addiction and its related ailments for many years and has thoughtfully considered the who, what, when, where, why and how of the problem. Listen in as he stops by Stem Spots to talk about the general problem and his work to help people become healthier in their efforts to live with their addictions.