Drug-seeking behavior
Maybe your insurance company is onto your doctor-shopping, and now you’re paying out-of-pocket for your meds. Or maybe you’re contacting friends and family members who might have some leftover opiates lying around in their medicine cabinets. Eventually, as Dr. Myer points out, your drug-seeking behavior is going to rise to a level where it becomes more important than family and friends. Maybe you’ll go as far as stealing meds from them. Maybe you won’t show up for work because you’re out trying to find pills.
Maybe you’ve considered trying heroin, not because you want to be on heroin, but because heroin is an opiate, it’s easily available on the street, and it’s far cheaper than purchasing prescription opiates. A single OxyContin pill can cost as much as $80 to $100; a single dose of heroin is around $15. Of course, heroin is also illegal and dangerous, with drug dealers cutting it with dangerous amounts of fentanyl, the drug that killed the musician Prince.
According to Matt Feehery, CEO of Memorial Hermann Prevention and Recovery Center, 80 percent of first-time heroin users began using as a way of coping with withdrawal symptoms.
