Opioids

Opioids are extracted from the poppy opium plants, they are the oldest drugs known with wide range of therapeutic use. They are also known as Afeem and Doda
It has huge withdrawal symptoms on its user when the drug is discontinued by them. It creates a hazardous physical dependence alongside the mental compulsion to abuse the drug.
It is generally taken orally, but abused commonly through injections by an addict, which has severe physical side-effects.
HISTORY
After its wide use in many countries, In 330 B.C ALEXANDER THE GREAT introduced opium to the people of India, later it was widely used by soldiers as a form of sedative and pain killer. A famous quote famously stated “Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real”

Physical symptoms:

• High alertness
• High blood pressure
• Increasing levels of sexual arousal
• Decrease in appetite
• Constricted blood vessels
• Sleeping disorders
• Joint and muscle pain
• STD diseases due to injection abuse
• Liver, kidney and heart failure

Behavioural symptoms:

• Large amount of time spent in recovering from the drug
• Systematic increase in the quantity taken
• Used for longer and greater time than intended
• Ignorance of day to day activities
• Becomes impossible to decrease the quantity taken

Psychological symptoms:

• False sense of improved self esteem
• Severe anxiety attacks
• Depression
• Irritability
• Low levels of motivation

Adverse effects on brain due to continuous usage

• Development of psychosis
• Euphoria
• Permanent damage to brain due to flow of lack of oxygen
• Delusions

Mr S G, belonged to a region, where opium plantation was in abundance, he was a builder working on contractual basis. While working in a construction site one day, he fell from the first floor and got a fracture. After coming home, he started experiencing severe pain in his fractured leg and the medicines prescribed to him were not too affective. Soon, after a few days one of his friends who was a regular opioid user visited him, upon seeing S G’s condition, he convinced him to use the opium injection he was carrying, to relieve of the pain he was suffering from. S G used the injection and got relief from the pain instantly; he enjoyed the high and felt his leg was not even injured anymore. In a few months his plaster came off, but his dependency on opioid became severe, he started injecting himself 6-7 times in a day and couldn’t control the quantity he was taking. He didn’t rejoin work and started feeling irritated and anxious, when he couldn’t get the dose adding to his sleeping pattern, which fluctuated almost every day. He then started to believe that he is suffering from a deadly disease and if he doesn’t get his dose of Opioid he will die. He got severe episodes of withdrawals, when he couldn’t get Opiod, and was taken to a hospital; from there he was referred for detoxification.