Over 4 percent of adults reported nonmedical use of drugs like OxyContin in 2012 to 2013
FRIDAY, June 24, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Misuse of opioids by American adults more than doubled from the early 2000s to 2013, according to the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The study was published online June 22 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
Survey results indicated 4.1 percent of adults reported nonmedical use of opioids in 2012 to 2013. This means they took the drug without a prescription or more of the drug than prescribed or for longer periods or more often. Ten years earlier, 1.8 percent of adults reported this behavior. Moreover, the proportion of adults who reported nonmedical use of opioids at some point in their lives rose from 4.7 percent to more than 11 percent during the study period. And 2.1 million Americans met the criteria for opioid use disorder, or opioid addiction, in 2012 to 2013.
According to the report, rates of opioid misuse were highest among the following: men; people with annual incomes less than $70,000; those previously married; and people with a high school education or less. Misuse was also higher among whites and Native-Americans and those living in the Midwest and West. Only about 5 percent of adults who misused opioids in the past year and 17 percent of those with opioid addiction ever received treatment.
“Given the dramatic increase in nonmedical use of prescription opioids, it is important that clinicians and patients also recognize the potent interaction of opioids with alcohol and other sedative-hypnotic drugs — an interaction that can be lethal,” George Koob, Ph.D., director of the NIAAA, said in an institute news release
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