Pain medications are often considered a gateway to drug abuse, but almost any medication can be used improperly. Drug abuse is not just junkies on the street looking to get high, and many people with this issue have perfectly legal prescriptions. It only becomes an issue when a person is abusing a particular drug, and there are many different ways it can occur. It may appear to only be a problem for the poor, downtrodden, and even those with a less than sterling personality, but drug abuse can happen to anyone.
Diet pills used to be a favourite way for people to lose weight without the need to excessive dieting or exercise programs, and women were often the ones given prescriptions. Many of them enjoyed the benefits of feeling little or no hunger, and they appreciated the extra energy. Most diet pills manufactured and prescribed in previous decades contained amphetamines, and it was this component that made them popular for abuse. Modern diet pills have substituted most of the ingredients that made them popular, and they now create less of an abuse issue.
Some medications are not necessarily addictive, but people depend upon them as if they were necessary. Taking a medication that is no longer needed for the body to function properly can be considered abuse, and it comes in all forms. Diet pills may be one way of abusing drugs, but pain pills have become a larger problem in recent years.
One of the reasons pain pills have become an issue is due to the fact many of them are formulated as a derivative of opiates. It is an addictive substance, and people find they feel so much better that they are unwilling to stop taking them when their condition eases. Doctors are now aware of this issue, and they do their best to ensure their patients take them no longer than necessary to alleviate the potential abuse they can cause.