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Why Painkiller Addicts Turn To Heroin; How To Help

About 80 percent of the world’s pain pills are consumed in the United States, which has just 5 percent of the world’s population, and many of those addicts turn to heroin, according to a recent CNN article.


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As a result, accidental prescription drug overdose is now the leading cause of acute preventable death for Americans, according to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent. Someone dies in this manner every 19 minutes. That is more deaths than from car accidents.

When painkillers stop working, or become too expensive, those addicts turn to heroin, said Cary Quashen, of Action Family Counseling in Valencia.

“Nobody ever woke up and decided they were going to be a heroin addict,” Quashen said.

The painkillers become physically addictive, and people build up an immunity to the amount they are taking, Quashen said. 

“All these drugs trigger ‘tolerance’ — the need to take higher doses for the same effect — and a craving for the drug in its absence,” Gupta said.

That’s when people start, “doctor shopping,” Quashen said. That’s when people seek painkillers from multiple doctors in order to get more.

“The habit becomes too expensive and people turn to heroin,” Quashan said, “which is a cheaper opiate based alternative.”

Today’s typical heroin addict starts using at 23, is more likely to live in the affluent suburbs and was likely unwittingly led to heroin through painkillers prescribed by his or her doctor, Gupta said.

So where are teens and young adults getting those painkillers in the first place?

“They are finding them in their family’s and friends’ medicine cabinets,” Quashen said.

People will often “child-proof” their house when their child is born, Quashen said, but people need to drug proof their house when their child is at the age where they or their friends might start to think about drugs.

“Parents need to realize that they are responsible for what happens in their household,” said Alex Urbina, Santa Clarita Valley life coach. “Parents need to be proactive and anticipate that their kids will snope, and will be curious.”

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“Santa Clarita doesn’t have more of a problem than anywhere else,” Quashen said, “heroin is a huge problem everywhere.”

“We talk about it more, we aren’t hiding our heads in the sand,” Quashen said, “we’re bringing it out into the open so people know about it.”

Watch this video to see what your brain is like on heroin. 

CNN contributed to this story.

About Action Family Counseling

Action Family Counseling has drug and alcohol residential treatment locations in Santa Clarita, Piru, and Bakersfield; Intensive Drug and Alcohol Outpatient in Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, Ventura, Pasadena, and Bakersfield, Action Family Counseling is here to help you.

Action Family Counseling primary goals are to maintain abstinence, stabilize co-occurring illnesses, and increase quality of life. We support and reinforce change in behavior patterns so that adolescents and adults, or clients and their families can fully indoctrinate the philosophies and principles needed to remain abstinent and stabilized for life.

Action Family Counseling accomplishes this by providing an effective treatment approach developed by the Department of Health and Human Services that includes a multi-disciplinarian personalized approach by a treatment team. Once a patient is identified, we provide an initial screening and assessment, which allows us to properly diagnose and place patients in the appropriate treatment setting.

Once a patient completes our intake process to our residential program he or she receives 24-hour crisis management, individual counseling, group therapy, family education and counseling, treatment planning, routine and random toxicology screening, pharmacotherapy and medication management, education about Alcohol and Other Drugs and mental health issues, self-help and support group orientation, case management services, and discharge service planning with a transitional service plan to our Intensive Outpatient treatment program to ensure a continuum of care.

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Why Painkiller Addicts Turn To Heroin; How To Help

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About Kimberly Beers

Kimberly Beers is a Santa Clarita native. She received her Bachelor's Degree in Journalism from California State University, Northridge in 2013. While attending the university, she focused her attention on news writing and worked as a primary news writer for the campus' award winning radio station and televised news program. She began writing news stories for KHTS in 2014 and hopes to have a lifetime career dedicated to writing and sharing the news