For anyone who has suffered a workplace accident or injury in Wisconsin is likely to have a long list of concerns. You worry that your injury will not improve and that additional surgeries or rehabilitation will fail and you could become unable to ever return to working full time and regain the income level that you had prior to the injury.
You worry that while you may be told by the doctors that you can return to work, some aspects of the injury will impair your ability to work and could also lead to complications that could lessen your abilities, interfere with your performance at work, and potentially lead to the loss of your job.
One worry you may not consider, but that may be a real danger, is the prospect of an injury that leads to chronic pain. While initially you may find relief in prescription drugs, the danger is that you could become addicted to those drugs, which could have serious consequences.
Some doctors prescribe these drugs far more than others do and this is one factor in the explosion of prescription drug abuse and the dramatic increase in deaths related to opioid drug use.
The government has warned some of the doctors that they prescribe far more than their peers, but a recent report has found that this does not alter their behavior.
If you are being prescribed powerful drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin, and you feel as if you are becoming dependent, you may need to discuss your pain control with another doctor.
Addiction to prescription medicine, while perceived to be less serious than an illegal narcotic, can still ruin your marriage, your ability to return to work, lead to an arrest for drugged driving or worse a fatal car accident or overdose.
Source: reuters.com, “Telling docs they overprescribe addicting drugs doesn’t make them stop,” Andrew M. Seaman, March 7, 2016
