Who is at risk for pain killer addiction?
To put it as simply and as starkly as possible: Everyone is at risk for pain killer addiction. Many Americans make the mistake of believing that drug abuseis a thing that happens to “somebody else.” Such thinking is largely the product of the stigma attached to drug addiction in the popular imagination; because drug addicts are widely perceived as deviant and even somehow defective, it’s easy to construe drug addiction as a problem that does not and cannot affect “ordinary” people. But nothing could be further from the truth. Drug addiction recognizes no social limits, and knows no social boundaries. Drug abusers belong to every race and class and age group of American society; drug abusers are black and white, rich and poor, young and old. Drug addiction is such a severe problem precisely because no one is immune to it, and precisely because no one has the power to escape from it once they’ve succumbed to its pull. Such is especially the case for pain killer addiction, which very ofte
