Why opiate addiction is so hard to detect

Amber Hollingsworth here from Hope for Families Recovery Center. And in this session, we're going to talk about opiate dependence. You know, normally when families show up in our office, it's very, very common to hear a wife or mother or a father or whoever this close loved one is say something like, how did this get this bad? How did it go on this long? And I didn't catch it. And they're so frustrated because they can't believe sometimes that their loved one has been struggling with being completely opiate dependent for years sometimes and they didn't know it. And the reason for this is opiate dependency doesn't look like other substance use disorders. The person does not look like they're intoxicated. It's not like their eyes look funny necessarily. It's not like they're stumbling around or slurring their words. In fact, most people who are taking opiates look like they're better functioning. So they might look like they're just in a little better mood or slightly more talkative. And honestly, for the first bunch of months or even a year or a little more than a year sometimes of opiate dependency, the person may be a lot better functioning. You may see that your kid makes the AB honor roll, that they may. Your. The. This person may get employee of the month. I mean, they actually a lot more functioning. And I think for individuals who don't have any experience with this, they think wouldn't they just look sort of out of it or intoxicated or not be able to function? And the answer to that is no. This is really tricky. This person is not running around tweaking, scratching their skin, falling over themselves. You really can't hardly detect it in someone at all unless you've had it before or you really know what you're looking for. So don't feel bad if you miss it. But I will tell you, especially if you're a parent out there of a teenager or young adult, college kid or something like that, this does not look like other substance use disorders. It's not like if your kid comes home really drunk and you can tell it, or if your kid comes home high on weed and you might even can see that they're just not going to have that look about them. It's very sneaky in that way. And the other thing about it that makes it really hard is because it makes the person so functional for so long, it really gets ingrained as such a psychological addiction, not just the physical, although this is a very physically addictive drug because it really works for people for quite a long time. Not only does it mask any kind of physical pain, but it also mask any kind of emotional pain. And it makes people feel, in a lot of cases, very sort of motivated. Like they have a lot of energy and they want to get a lot of things done. So people that struggle with opiate dependency and early recovery, they have a hard time because they remember when they were so productive. So a trigger for opiate dependency might be something like needing to go to work and work 12 hours or feeling like you really need to get a lot of homework done or that you really need to get your house clean because you got visitors coming. This particular addiction is a little bit different and there are some nuances about it. So I just want to get the word out there. It doesn't look like other addictions. The triggers may be different. And there are some unique things about opiate dependency that are different than other types of addictions.