How do I know my loved one might be addicted to Opioid?

Signs suggestive of opioid abuse:

Adverse consequences of opioid use
* Decreased functionality
* Observed intoxication
* Negative affective state
 
Impaired control over medicative or compulsive use:

* Failure to bring unused medications to appoitments when asked to do so
* Unsanctioned dose escalation
* Requests for early prescription renewals
* Appearance at the clinic without an appointment and in distress
* Frequent visits to emergency room departments to request drug
* Family reports of overuse or intoxication

Craving and preoccupation with opioids:

* Failure to comply with non-drug pain therapies
* Failure to keep appointment
* Shows interest in relief of symptoms, not rehabilitation
* Reports no effect of non-opioid interventions
* Seeks prescriptions from multiple providers
 
If your love one has one or more of the above signs, he or she will need your help and support to control his/her medication distribution and monitor.  We encourage family member to become an important part of our treatment team. We will try to use non-opioid therapy to relieve a patient's pain, and we have successfully helped some chronic pain pateints become independent of opioid by the end of rehabilitation. For those pateints who are opioid  dependent, we monitor and control their prescription refill. In some cases, we resort to buprenorphine for their pain management.