Chronic pain affects one out of three or four adults; millions of people suffer from severe disabling pain. If you think you are addicted and want to get off pain killers or other drugs, it's best to get detoxified as fast as you can and then go through some type of rehabilitation; it's important to have others to lean on and learn from and offer support to you. Patients can innocently start taking pain killers after a moderate injury or because of a severe injury in an automobile accident, fall or for post surgical pain.

There are a number of effective treatment options to treat pain killer addiction to prescription opioids and to help manage the sometimes severe withdrawal symptoms that can accompany sudden stopping of pain killers or drugs. Pain killer addiction includes: opiate dependency, opiate addiction, narcotic dependency, narcotic addiction, and pain killer dependency or painkiller dependency. An opioid-dependent pain patient has improved function with the use of the drug while an opioid-addicted patient does not have improvement.

Many chronic pain patients may be under-treated as a result of doctors who are trying to gain control over pain killer addiction, they report. Often people who are addicted to pain killers are plagued with various symptoms to different degrees; many times they don't associate the symptoms with the drug. Less common side effects and adverse reactions of pain killers are: confusion, hallucinations, delirium, hives, itching, hypothermia, bradycardia (slow heart rate), tachycardia (rapid heart rate), raised intracranial pressure, ureteric or biliary spasm, muscle rigidity and flushing.

There are many side effects and adverse reactions that can occur with the use of opioids as pain killers. Many other drugs can interact with the opioids and cause a variety of symptoms; this can be fatal. Opioids should never be taken when drinking alcohol (also a drug) or when alcohol may still be in the system.

Addiction is both a biological and psychological condition. Once a patient addicted to pain killing drugs has completed detoxification, the treatment provider must then work with the patient to determine which course of treatment would be best for the patient. Addiction to pain killers is an escalating problem today, especially the abuse of opioid pain killers.

It's important to get help and not to try getting off pain killers on your own. You must make a change in your lifestyle in order to prevent you from taking pain killers and or other drugs again. Taking the time to spend in a treatment center, detoxing, is of the utmost priority.

If you can't do an in-patient rehab, find out how you can do outpatient rehab and pay for it under your insurance plan; check your insurance policy to see if it's covered. Many insurance plans do cover inpatient detox, check yours if you have insurance. All other demands of children, a job, school, or any other responsibilities may make inpatient treatment seem like an intrusion but it's not.

Today's pain killer treatment options are drawn from long-time experience and clinical research from studying and treating other types of drugs and even heroin addiction. The many problems that are associated with pain killer addiction and abuse have experts, doctors and authorities searching for solutions. Experts say that only a small segment of patients with a medical need for using narcotic pain medications ever become addicted.