Oxycodone is a highly-addictive analgesic or pain reliever that is sold in a wide range of prescription drugs such as Roxicodone, Percocet and others. These drugs vary in strength and formula and also include controlled-release and extended-release versions that are classified by the DEA as Schedule II drugs under the Controlled Substance Act or CSA. Essentially these are drugs that have important medical uses that are also highly-addictive by nature.
When you’re managing chronic pain, your symptoms can drive you to become dependent on your pain relief meds and it’s difficult to know when or if you’ve slipped completely into addiction.
Here, we take a look at five signs that tell you that your oxycodone dependency requires specialist treatment.
1. Increasingly Intense Craving
A clear sign of addiction to prescription pain medication is when you develop a disproportionate sense of when you need pain relief that leads to cravings. It’s easy to become conditioned to taking meds when certain triggers push you in the direction of your pain relief other than the actual pain itself. Recognizing that you are developing drug-seeking tendencies and behaviors is a big step towards dealing with the problem before you fall into addiction.
2. Reduced Tolerance to your Meds
If you find that you are taking more oxycodone-based meds to get the desired effect, this is a sign that your tolerance to the drug has been reduced. In other words, you’ll feel as though it’s lost its potency and compensate by taking progressively more to get you where you want to be. In the long run this can be extremely dangerous as it can lead to overdosing, causing you serious and possibly fatal harm.
3. Developing Dependence
If your first thought when you wake up or last thing at night is to take Oxycodone or feel unable to function until you’ve taken it, this is a clear sign of a developing dependency. Dependency is generally the first step towards addiction and if you continue to medicate when your need for analgesia has passed, you could be closer to it than you think.
4. You Get Withdrawal Symptoms
When you have a developed dependency on Oxycodone, you’ll notice getting withdrawal symptoms more frequently including abdominal pain, vomiting, increased respirations and heart rate together with other distressing symptoms. This is your body signaling you to feed an addiction and symptoms can vary considerably from person to person. If you are experiencing withdrawal symptoms, the time to seek help is now.
5. General Lack of Interest in Daily Life
When there is addiction present, the substance at its heart is all you’ll think about, to the extent that it will often seem as though everything else in unimportant. This can lead to feelings of isolation or the need to withdraw from the world altogether and that’s when an addiction is a problem. Without communicating what you’re going through to the people closest to you, it’s easy to get lost in your addiction completely.
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Our Southern California addiction recovery center offers a warm and welcoming environment, where you can receive some of the best addiction treatment in San Juan Capistrano, CA. If you feel you are falling into addictive behavior and are interested in either holistic treatment or our personalized drug and alcohol addiction treatment programs, contact Casa Recovery in confidence today.