Make it a priority to communicate well with your medical professionals, including your prescribing doctor or nurse and your pharmacist. Give them honest information about your health history so they can make the most informed decisions about which medications to prescribe for you. If you’re being prescribed an opioid, be sure to get clear information on:
- Why you’re being prescribed that medication instead of a non-opioid or alternative pain treatment.
- What danger signs to heed.
- How to correctly follow the prescribed dosage.
- How best to store and dispose of your prescription.
A respected nonprofit organization offers this more detailed list of questions to ask if you’re prescribed an opioid.
Be an advocate for your health: If you know that an opioid prescription would be a risk for you, explicitly tell your doctor that and ask for a different prescription.
Beginning to misuse opioids is a voluntary choice, but such abuse can lead to brain changes that challenge a person’s ability to make a different choice. Thus the best way to fight opioid use disorder is to avoid it in the first place, and that starts with using your prescriptions exactly as instructed. Especially if you struggle with chronic pain, it can be tempting to overuse the medications to get more relief. In reality, though, excessive opioids result in needing to ingest more to achieve the same level of relief. You don’t get ahead when you take extra.
When appropriate, establish open communication with family members about opioid prescriptions. If the medication is yours, explain how you will be taking it; if it is a family member’s, talk to the relative about the dosage instructions. Help each other strictly follow the directions.
Furthermore:
- Don’t share any prescription medication. (Studies have found that having an opioid prescription makes it almost three times more likely that a family member will later overdose on opioids.)
- Track usage of prescription pills to safeguard against pilfering.
- Lock up addictive prescriptions. A simple lockbox, such as those used to store cash or important documents, can be purchased affordably at pharmacies or online.
- Store prescriptions in a high location, out of the reach of children (to prevent accidental poisoning).
If you know or suspect that a family member might try to take your medication, locking it up to keep it out of their hands is essential. The extra step may be an inconvenience, but you will be doing that person a service in the long run. Also, if you suspect that you will be tempted to misuse your opioid prescription, having to take that additional extra step to unlock the box gives you one more chance to resist the temptation.
Even if you don’t suspect that a family member would try to take your pills, if you have an older child or a teenager in the home, use the prescription as an opportunity to talk about the dangers of misusing medications, especially opioids. Such a discussion can cut a child’s risk of future drug abuse in half, according to the U.S. Department of Health’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has found that more than 90% of patients who are prescribed opioids end up with unused pills, so it’s important to know that keeping unused, even expired, medications around the house is a risk. Consider how much less work it is to take leftover opioids out of a medicine cabinet than to locate someone who will sell you heroin. That’s partly why the explosion in opioid prescriptions, beginning in the 1990s, has led to the public health crisis the United States now finds itself fighting.
Disposing of unused medication at a drug drop-box location is the best method to keep opioids from building up in your home. (Many medications cannot be safely thrown in the trash or flushed down a toilet.) Here are locations across Ohio that safely collect unused medication:
Another good option is to participate in a take-back day, such as those organized by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office or the Drug Enforcement Administration. On these days, law enforcement agencies host collection bins.