How Safe are Your Kids From Becoming Addicted to Your Pain Medication?

Talk about taking pain medication and the strong potential for drug addiction is everywhere. There's chatter on the street, lectures at school, specials on TV and loads of information on the Internet.

All we have to do is sift through the mass of data and hope to separate fact from fiction, spin from honest dialogue and use the valid intelligence to assimilate a personal remedy.

As discussed in an earlier post, prescription painkillers are the most commonly used drug among kids (teens), the majority of whom gain access to them at home.


Despite the supply of information, kids flock to prescription drugs because they believe them to be safer than illicit street drugs. Why? Because there's a certain level of trust associated with medicines prescribed by doctors. In the average mind, doctors are gods and anything they do will make you better not worse.

While this thinking is not wrong in essence, it is nonetheless naive to place physicians above human error. We can all agree that prescription errors are being made.

And at the risk of sounding anti-doctor--though I'm not--in today's world of mounting drug overdose deaths associated with medications prescribed by doctors, it's fair to question both motives and or aptitude.

But I digress...

Because we have unsecured Schedule II pain medications in our medicine cabinets or on the bedroom nightstand, our kids pay the greatest price. Maybe not right away, but their addiction worsens and becomes uncontrollable with time.

Fentanyl is said to be 30 times more powerful than heroin by some, others claim the murderer in a bottle to be 50 times more lethal. Yet, it sits unguarded in homes throughout the country.

With the growing number of teen overdose deaths and suicides caused by potent pain medication, some families are educating themselves--but not nearly enough. We absolutely MUST secure dangerous medications if we hope to save our kids from devastation and death.

The side effects alone are enough to give us pause when taking prescription painkillers, and I'm referring to legal scripts for genuine ailments. Just think about what these pills are doing to an adolescent body, which--in many instances--is not compatible with the drug.

Having said all that, we have to know what to do to protect kids from gaining access to lethal pain medications. We can't control what they get from a friend, but we can prevent easy access at home.

Kids who cannot get painkillers at home are not as prone to use them. This is because pain medications are closely monitored controlled substances.

Only individuals under supervised medical care have legal clearance to possess Schedule II pain medication. They are otherwise difficult to obtain without paying an exorbitant amount for one pill on the street.

Needless to say, a teen's allowance won't suffice for buying pain medications on the street, and would require stealing money from dad's wallet, which is too risky.

What can you do to keep your kids from becoming addicted to your pain medication? 

It would be a waste of time to lay out a long list of "DONT'S"--so there isn't one.

Kids think pain medications are safe to take to get high because in their mind your doctor said they were--or he wouldn't have prescribed them. Period.

So telling them not to take them and explaining the dangers of addiction doesn't work. They look at you and say, "You take them and you're fine." What can you say after that?

Try doing what we discussed above. Secure all prescribed medications in a locked safe.

And when you no longer have to take these meds--provided you're not hooked--, the threat of easy home access for your kids is over.

Article was written by Peggy Hatchet James
Copyright © 2015