OxyContin Addiction, Abuse, and Symptoms

How OxyContin affects the brain

Opioids work by binding to specific receptors in your brain and mimic the effects of naturally occurring pain-relieving chemicals in your body. By binding with these receptors, OxyContin effectively blocks your perception of pain. Because it physically changes how your body feels and responds to pain, it’s a powerful analgesic for chronic pain sufferers, but these changes can also make your body physically dependent on the drug.

Besides blocking pain, the most common effects OxyContin has on the brain are euphoria and feelings of relaxation, which is why there’s a high potential for abuse. Some people develop a tolerance to OxyContin, which may lead them to take higher and/or more frequent doses to feel pain relief and euphoria or reduce symptoms of withdrawal.

Behavioral signs of OxyContin usage and abuse

Once you’ve developed a tolerance and begin taking more OxyContin than prescribed, you’re at a high risk of developing a pain reliever use disorder. However, some people become addicted even when taking the drug exactly as prescribed. According to the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, approximately 1.7 million people aged 12 and over had a pain reliever use disorder.

OxyContin abuse can lead to behavioral changes, including increased use, health problems, physical withdrawals, and failure to meet significant responsibilities at school, work, and home. While behavioral symptoms of OxyContin abuse vary from one person to another, some people who can’t locate enough of the drug through legal prescriptions may turn to risky behaviors, such as borrowing or stealing pills from family and friends, forging prescriptions, or even robbing pharmacies. This preoccupation with obtaining and using OxyContin can also lead to isolation from loved ones, neglecting personal hygiene, and various legal and financial problems.

For some people, OxyContin can also be a gateway to illicit drug use, because it affects the body in a way similar to heroin. Individuals addicted to OxyContin may turn to heroin if they can’t obtain a prescription, because they may be able to find heroin on the street more easily than OxyContin. In 2011, the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality estimated that 4% to 6% of people who misused prescription opioids switched to heroin, and about 80% of heroin users initially misused prescription opioids.

How OxyContin affects the body

OxyContin provides pain relief by blocking pain messages to the brain and causes feelings of euphoria by acting on the reward center in the brain. However, it can also affect your body in negative ways, especially if it’s abused. Some negative effects on the body include constipation, stomach pain, slowed respiration, slowed heart rate, heart palpitations, and tremors.

Early physical effects of OxyContin

Because OxyContin is an extended-release form of oxycodone, it’s designed to slowly release the medication into your system over time. Therefore, when you first start taking OxyContin, it may not begin relieving your pain for two to four hours. It typically reaches its peak effect in 15 to 30 hours but will continue to work for a few days to provide long-acting, steady pain relief.

Severe and long-term physical effects of OxyContin

Chronic OxyContin users may develop a tolerance to the drug and begin taking higher-than prescribed amounts and more frequent doses to experience the same pain-relieving and euphoric effect they crave. This can lead to severe complications and potentially dangerous long-term physical effects on your body. These effects can also be compounded when abusing OxyContin or combining it with other substances.

Because OxyContin slowly releases throughout the day, some people may seek ways to make the drug take effect sooner by overriding the extended-release mechanism. This may include chewing the pill or crushing and snorting it, which puts the drug into your system quicker, allowing you to experience the effects immediately. Some people may also crush the pill, dilute it with water, and inject it to introduce it into the bloodstream as quickly as possible. The likelihood of developing an OxyContin addiction is significantly higher when someone takes the drug in ways other than prescribed.

Mixing OxyContin with alcohol can create more severe and possibly life-threatening effects. Since both substances are a depressant, combining the two can severely impact your respiratory and cardiovascular functions. Taking oxycodone together with benzodiazepines or drugs that affect the nervous system may cause severe breathing problems, drowsiness, coma, or death. Taking other medications that cause drowsiness or breathing problems while taking OxyContin, such as sleeping pills, anti-anxiety medication, muscle relaxants, cough relievers with codeine or hydrocodone, or other opioid-based drugs, can also put you at a higher risk for serious side effects.

Global prescription opioid usage has increased with prevalence remaining in North America

An estimated 53 million people worldwide used opioids at least once during 2017, according to data collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in the 2019 World Drug Report. This number represented 1.1% of the global population ages 15 to 64. Half the people who reported opioid use also reported using opiates, including heroin and opium, over the past year.

One-quarter of the world’s opioids users between 15 and 64 resided in North America, giving it the highest prevalence of nonmedical opioid users worldwide. Pharmaceutical opioids remain the biggest concern in North America, including nonmedical use of oxycodone. While the new abuse-deterrent formula of OxyContin prevented it from being crushed to cut down on abuse, even if only a small portion of people switch to heroin, it translates to a much larger number of people using this illicit alternative.

Prescription opioid misuse remains high in the U.S. among all age groups

According to the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 3.6% of the population misused prescription pain relievers in the United States over the past year. This made misuse of prescription pain relievers second only to marijuana as the most common form of illicit drug use. The most commonly misused prescription pain relievers were products containing hydrocodone, but an estimated 3.4 million people ages 12 or older misused products containing oxycodone. This number represented 1.2% of the population and ranked it as the second most misused prescription pain reliever that year.

Because OxyContin is an opioid-based substance, it’s also included in the estimation of opioid misuse, which included people who used heroin or misused prescription pain relievers. An estimated 10.3 million people ages 12 or older misused opioids in 2018, which included 9.9 million people who misused prescription pain relievers and 808,000 people who used heroin. Of these people, an estimated 2 million had an opioid use disorder, including 1.7 million people with a prescription pain reliever use disorder and 0.5 million people with a heroin use disorder.