“As thousands are arrested and thrown in jail for possession of marijuana, and missions are launched to crack down on drugs like cocaine and heroin (which are obviously real dangers as well), the medical establishment seems to turn a blind eye to pharmaceutical deaths that surpass even these notorious hard drug killers.” – A Gucciardi

Yes, prescription painkillers do in fact take more lives per year than two of the hardest illegal drugs in the nation — surpassing both heroin and cocaine in their total related deaths. It all has to do with how these prescription pharmaceuticals work in the brain, and how many individuals around the country are easily acquiring them to feed their deadly habits.

Because after all, who said legal drugs were all that different from illegal drugs in many cases?

Prescription painkillers are known to ‘numb’ the pain, which is achieved by their ability to bind to brain receptors and decrease your body’s ability to process pain signals. As a result, it’s easy to enter into this ‘feel good’ state to the point of serious addiction and even physical dependence. Think similarly to a heroin user who needs to inject the drug multiple times a day in order to reach the ‘high’ that they have  become accustomed to.

But let’s look beyond the basic science of how painkillers work and into the largest study on the issue of painkiller deaths, which was recently conducted by McGill University in Canada. An impressing topic that truly does deserve thorough research, researchers from the team tracked the total death stats from both heroin and cocaine, and then compared them to the painkiller death figures that they collected from numerous top sources. Published in the American Journal of Public Health, some key findings include: Continue reading →