Battle Between the Sexes

Gender is potentially playing a role in the abuse of prescribed pain medication (opioids) according to a recent studying involving 662 chronic noncancer patients (half male, half female) taking opioids for pain relief. According to researchers, women are more likely to abuse prescription medication because of psychological distress while men are likely to abuse as a result of social and behavioral problems. Based off such hypotheses, researchers hope to eventually pitch this to doctors in the hopes that, if prescriptions are administered with the patient's gender/emotional state in mind, they can work towards minimizing abuse amongst sexes.

The study demonstrated that both genders reflected similar drug behavior upon administration but had different risk factors for medicinal abuse. Women were more likely to reveal traumatizing events from sexual/physical abuse earlier in their life once medicated. Women also tended to emotionally withdraw while men engaged in anxious and criminal-like behavior. They concluded that women experiencing high stress levels and pain that is not related to cancer should be treated for mood disorders and counseled on dangers that will arise from dependence on self-medicating. Men with noncancer pain should be monitored for behavioral problems, their pills should be counted and urine samples should be taken frequently.

I think it is interesting to do a comparitive study between males and females with respect with drug abuse. I like the direction the researchers and the study was headed but I think it generalizes men and women a lot. Everybody has different reasons for abusing medication and typically responses to drug abuse vary per person. Sometimes a second response to medication can even be different than the first response. Sometimes behavior goes from one extreme to the other after one round of dosage. Behavior can be rather variable. I understand where they are coming from, though, and I could be totally wrong -- maybe MOST men and women DO demonstrate the behavior described in the study. I only have had one encounter with someone abusing prescription drugs and ironically, she admitted to being sexually and physically abused under drug intoxication. Maybe there is something to this generality! I would be interested to see more studies similar to this. Whatcha think??

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=115868