Doctors Discuss Search for Answers for Prescription Drug Abuse During Stop at Wheeling Jesuit University
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WHEELING – When Dr. Steven Loyd was a medical resident in East Tennessee, he had easy access to prescription painkillers, and it led to an addiction that forced him to take an average of 100 Vicodin tablets a day.
At 5 milligrams each, this equaled more than 500 milligrams of opiates daily, Loyd said. He knew he had a severe problem when he had to treat a patient for a drug overdose and learned the patient had taken less medication than he was taking every day.
Loyd spoke of his addiction – and how his experiences now help him to treat other addicts – to local medical professionals during a presentation at Wheeling Jesuit University Monday night.
“I couldn’t even put my notes to paper,” he said. “I just went to the bathroom and cried. At that moment, I had basically just given up all hope. I just felt I would overdose, nobody would find me, and I would die.”
Loyd is the medical director for the Tennessee Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Loyd’s addiction began in 1997, and he has been in recovery since 2004.
“I had gotten tired – I was anxious and depressed,” he said of why he first tried Vicodin. “I took it for the first time just to see what would happen. Over the next three and a half years, I steadily increased the dosage and began to add other drugs, such as Xanax. At the end of that time, I was taking more than 500 milligrams of opiate narcotics every day.”
Accompanying Loyd to Wheeling Monday night was his father, Daryl, whom he credits with pointing him toward drug addiction treatment.
He said it was during his treatment he learned the neurological causes of addiction that weren’t taught in his anatomy classes in medical school. In short, opiate drugs “hijack” the limbic system, or pleasure center, of the brain. Cravings for opioids then overpower the thinking and reasoning abilities found in the prefrontal cortex.
Loyd said there is a difference between drug dependence and drug addiction. Someone who is only dependent on drugs will go through painful withdrawal, then not feel the cravings leading them to return to the drug.
Someone who is addicted to drugs, however, will continue to crave and use the drug despite consequences of perhaps losing their family and job.
Loyd said he received the best treatment for drug addiction that is available to medical personnel, but isn’t always available to the general public. He suggests more drug treatment centers are necessary.
Loyd also believes eliminating opiates in society isn’t the answer because the users then will move on to more powerful drugs such as heroin.
“In general, those addicted to opiates don’t stop using opiates on their own,” he said. “Treatment is the answer.”
The treatment he prescribes involves keeping addicts out of the environment where their addiction started, and educating them so they know they can improve their place in life.
Loyd will also speak to medical professionals during a presentation at noon today at Weirton Medical Center, and at 6 p.m. today at Reynolds Memorial Hospital.