Pain Pills and the Need to Please

Research suggests womens' need to please could be getting them in trouble with so-called opioid prescription painkillers such as oxytocin and vicodin. Painkiller problems are reaching epidemic proportions for women, who are more likely than men to be given opioid prescriptions and to be given higher doses on average than men. Rates of toxic reactions to opioids have tripled among women since 1999, and opioid-related poisoning hospitalizations have increased for women but not for men. How did we get from "mother's little helper" to "mother's major drug problem?"

 "Women are more likely to report that their fear of disappointing others leads them to make poor decisions about their pain care."

Partially, the trouble comes from doctors who seem to hand the stuff out like candy. A study of unintentional pharmaceutical overdose fatalities reported that prescribed opioids were present in 44% of women. Drug monitoring program records show that among fatality cases, women were more than twice as likely as men to have received prescriptions from five clinicians or more per year; putting women at greater risk for polypharmacy (dangerous drug interactions), for unintential poisoning and for receiving mutliple opioid prescriptions from mutliple doctors.

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