Two distinct neural pathways may make opioids like fentanyl so addictive

Contact a health care provider if you have questions about your health. Awarded agencies will work collaboratively with relevant partners, leading to emerging innovations and strategies for drug overdose prevention and response statewide. Agencies will also address the social determinants of health that contribute to perpetuating an individual’s vulnerability to overdose, such as lack of stable housing, poverty, stigma, and racism.

Preventing drug misuse in children and teenagers

• Heroin is often easier to get than opioids that are meant to be prescriptions.
• People with untreated OUD often experience social, legal, economic, and health consequences as a result of their opioid use.
• Variations in the genes that provide instructions for making opioid receptors have been studied extensively as genetic risk factors for opioid addiction.
• Having an opioid addiction or loving someone who does can be scary and stressful.

Opioids are a class of drugs that derive from, or mimic, natural substances found in the opium poppy plant. Opioids work in the brain to produce a variety of effects, including pain relief. OUD affects more than 2 million people in the U.S., including 3% to 20% of people using prescription opioids. However, those taking prescription opioids aren’t the only people at risk for developing OUD — anyone using opioids can become addicted.

Find treatment for substance use disorder, including opioid use disorder

Sometimes people crush pills or open capsules, dissolve the powder in water, and inject the liquid into a vein. These aim to help people with OUD learn new ways of thinking about and relating to drug use and can also encourage them to adhere to treatment regimens. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three medications—methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone—for the treatment of OUD. These symptoms can occur within hours of their last use and can last for days to weeks.

Rat cells grew in mice brains, and helped sniff out cookies

Symptoms of this disease include an overpowering desire to use opioids, increased opioid tolerance, and withdrawal syndrome when opioids are discontinued. Thus, OUD can range from dependence on opioids to addiction.[1] OUD affects over 16 million people worldwide and over 2.1 million in the United States. Strikingly, there are as many opioid addiction treatment patients using opioids regularly as there are patients diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, psoriatic arthritis, and epilepsy in the United States. More than 120,000 deaths worldwide every year are attributed to opioids.[2] Examples of opioids include heroin (diacetylmorphine), morphine, codeine, fentanyl, and oxycodone.

• This condition results from a combination of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, some of which have not been identified.
• This is why opioid drugs, even those prescribed by a doctor, are very addictive and can lead to opioid use disorder.
• For example, taking a large dose of opioids can slow or even stop breathing, which can lead to death.
• Addiction is a treatable, chronic disease; be sure to ask your doctor about the risk of returning to drug use and overdose.
• The emergency and referral resources listed above are available to individuals located in the United States and are not operated by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Opioids are narcotic, painkilling drugs produced from opium or made synthetically. This class of drugs includes, among others, heroin, morphine, codeine, methadone, fentanyl and oxycodone. Drug addiction can start with experimental use of a recreational drug in social situations, and, for some people, the drug use becomes more frequent. For others, particularly with opioids, drug addiction begins when they take prescribed medicines or receive them from others who have prescriptions. If you or someone you love is struggling with an opioid use disorder, help and hope are available. If you aren’t sure, it is best to treat the situation like an overdose—you could save a life.

• An opioid overdose occurs when a person uses enough of the drug to produce life-threatening symptoms or death.
• Methadone is a medicine provided in a clinic or inpatient setting to treat opioid use disorder.
• Naloxone is not absorbed orally and only exerts its action when injected into the bloodstream.

Both legal and illegal opioids carry a risk of overdose if a person takes too much of the drug, or if opioids are combined with other drugs (particularly tranquilizers called benzodiazepines). OUD significantly contributes to overdose deaths among people who use illegal opioids or misuse prescription opioids. Opioids—mainly synthetic opioids like illegally made fentanyl–are currently the most represented in overdose deaths.

Understanding Opioid Use Disorder (OUD)