Prescription medication addiction is becoming a problem of epidemic proportions in this country. Add fetuses to the growing list of those addicted to prescription medication. No, that is not a typo, and really the only surprise is that obviously fetuses cannot access the Internet – yet!
Medical authorities are witnessing explosive growth in the number of newborn babies hooked on prescription painkillers, innocent victims of their mothers' addictions.
Early Intervention Key
Doctors want to intervene early to get pregnant addicts into rehabilitation. But some expectant mothers hide their addictions from their obstetricians because they fear government social workers will take the child, Solomon says.
A pregnant woman can't quit cold turkey because as she goes into withdrawal, the baby will, too. The baby could have seizures in the womb. A miscarriage can occur if the fetus begins to withdraw from the medications.
One in 20 babies born in the semirural community north of Tampa is addicted to painkillers, Newport says. The number of babies treated in the neonatal intensive care unit for withdrawal from prescription painkillers has more than doubled from 37 in 2008 to 88 in 2010.
There's a misconception that because these are prescription drugs, they aren't going to be harmful to the baby. Doctors feel very sorry for the babies, and it's very difficult for to understand why these young women think it's OK. Most are addicted before they get pregnant.
The number of pregnant women with addictions to narcotic painkillers has grown so rapidly that Mercy Hospital Recovery Center in Portland, Maine, developed a specialized treatment program for them.
The moms-to-be spend a month in a six-hours-a-day program before stepping down to three hours daily. About half the babies born don't have any withdrawal. The other half have mild withdrawal.
The experience of opiate withdrawal is the most painful and most difficult of any withdrawal syndrome. It has been described by physicians as physical, emotional and spiritual hell.
At Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine doctors screen every pregnant woman for opiate abuse.
In the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, doctors and nurses are trained to look for signs of addiction in pregnant women, such as problems controlling pain with normal doses of medicine.
Long-Term Effects
Much of the prognosis for babies exposed to prescription painkillers is drawn from long experience with children exposed to heroin, an opiate that has many of the same characteristics as the narcotic painkillers. Most of those children, over time, catch up to their peers, although some have learning difficulties and attention deficit problems, doctors say.
Few long-term studies have followed children exposed to the prescription painkillers.
Most importantly, moving forward, this behavior has got to be stopped. More education is needed to increase awareness. A good online drug class might be a start.