What you don’t know about these pills could kill you.
In Wyoming, a leading form of drug abuse in 12 to 25 year olds is prescription painkillers, like Hydrocodone or Oxycodone. 1
Most overdoses happen because people don’t realize how deadly these pills can be when used incorrectly.
In fact, many teens believe that prescription drugs are actually “safer” than illegal street drugs 2 — but overdose statistics tell us that’s not the case.
Since 2004, the number of total overdose deaths from prescription painkiller overdose has nearly doubled. 3
That means more people are dying as a result of overdosing on prescription painkillers than they are from overdosing on heroin and cocaine combined. 4
But not all overdoses are on purpose. Most prescription painkiller overdoses happen because people don’t know the risks.
They don’t know that misusing prescription painkillers can dramatically slow, or completely stop, your breathing 5 — resulting in a lack of oxygen to the brain 6 and causing unintentional, but completely permanent, brain damage.
They don’t know that misusing painkillers can lead to serious addiction 7— or that prescription drug abuse can increase your likelihood to abuse alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. 8
And because people who live in rural counties — like we do here in Wyoming — are twice as likely to overdose on prescription painkillers as people in bigger cities 9…
You’re at risk.
The forty-six people in Wyoming who died from a prescription opioid overdose in 2015? 10