Can children become addicted to pain medications?
We use opioid (narcotic) pain medicines for certain pain conditions, especially after surgery and for patients with cancer pain. The number of children who become addicts is extraordinarily small. Most people of any age will become tolerant to opioid medications. They may need more and more to get the same effect; they may say “this medicine doesn’t work for me any more.” They may have withdrawal if they stop the medicine suddenly (withdrawal can be avoided by following a medication schedule provided by the pain service). This is a physical phenomenon that happens to almost everyone and is different from addiction. As a matter of policy, though, we do have patients and parents sign a “controlled substances contract” when these medicines are prescribed through the pain clinic for non-cancer pain and enforce the rules strictly, but problems are rare.
