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You’re a rising athlete going D1—training 24/7 to boost your abilities and pave the path to your future career. Or maybe you’re a middle-aged office worker pulling overtime almost every day to provide for your family.
Just as offers roll in or paychecks stack up — that’s when it hits. A fracture, a toothache, an injury. The pain is unbearable, so you ask your doctor for something to help — just for a few days.
That’s when they hand you opioids. These drugs release endorphins, which reduce pain and enhance feelings of pleasure, bind to and activate opioid receptors in the brain, spinal cord, and other organs, effectively blocking pain signals from reaching the brain.
But while the pain is silenced, something else happens. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that large amounts of dopamine are released when the opioid receptors are activated, flooding your body and activating the brain’s reward system. Without pain as a trigger, people begin seeking opioids not for relief, but for pleasure.
And that’s where addiction can quietly begin.
As users continue consuming opioids daily to gain the feeling of pleasure from the release of endorphins, tolerance begins to develop. According to the HEALTH University of Utah, tolerance happens through changes at the cellular level. As the brain restores the balance after overstimulation from the drug, the entire brain starts to work differently to set a new normal that includes the past effects of the drug.
With continuous use, for example, the old amount of opium that a user used to take to feel around 60% euphoria would diminish to 20%. And without the old feelings, users would end up taking more than before, leading to a future where large amounts of opioids would be needed to feel even just a tiny bit of euphoria.
Now that tolerance is in the game, needing large amounts of opium for small amounts of euphoria not only increases the level of addiction one has, but also can lead users to something worse than addiction: overdose.
Tracked by the National Center of Health Statistics, as of 2022, the death rate of overdose stands at a total of 26.9% in California, which totals to almost 11,000 deaths, proving the severity of overdose-related problems.
So next time you get a severe injury and ask for painkillers to reduce the pain, try to steer away from opioids, and instead target less-addictive drugs like the FDA-approved brand Journavx, or a simple ibuprofen to ease the pain.
This article was written as part of a program to educate youth and others about Alameda County’s opioid crisis, prevention and treatment options. The program is funded by the Alameda County Behavioral Health Department and the grant is administered by Three Valleys Community Foundation.
