Dangers of prescription drugs

Dangers of Prescription Drugs
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Introduction
Many people live in ignorance of the dangers of the prescription drugs. Prescriptions have caused many negatives effects in the lives of many people. For example, it has contributed deaths, diseases and has left many disabled. Most of the drugs in use for treatment are under tested. This leaves them to be less beneficial to the patients because the researchers do not know the reactions of the drugs. This exposes people into many risks. Some of the drugs in the market have side effects to the patients. Drug prescription would refer to health care program used by the physicians to govern the plan of care for the patient (Benowicz, 1983). They are instructions to the patient, the nurse or the care provider. Therefore, wrong prescription would result to undesired outcomes. These aftermaths of the wrong usage of drugs may affect the patient negatively. Therefore, the discussion herein examines the dangers of prescription drugs.
However, the prescriptions drugs if taken as instructed would do well on the people. Therefore, if well taken and every instruction followed then, the dangers of prescription would be reduced. The prescription drugs would be dangerous if the patients or other people misuse or abuse the drugs. There is a difference between drug abuse and drug misuse. Drug abuse refers to when a person seeks to achieve a feeling by taking the drugs especially if they take the drug in high amounts (Brown, & Stoudemire, 1998). On the other hand, drug misuse would refer to when a person takes drugs prescribed to another person. For example, if a person continues feeling pain even after taking the pills prescribed by the doctor may take some more pills a few minutes later thinking that it would work better. However, in both the cases of drug abuse and drug misuse of prescription drugs is dangerous and eventually would lead to loss of lives or complicated circumstances than the one they were trying to treat.
A number of factors may contribute to prescription drugs. Sometimes doctors do not deeply explain the significance of following the prescription faithfully. Therefore, patients may not understand the repercussions of misusing or abusing the prescription drugs. Another factor is ignorance of the persons prescribed. Persons under prescription may not know how to interpret the doctor’s writings and instructions (Brust, 1996). This may cause patient to abuse or misuse medication. In other cases, patient may be impatient with the process of prescription. A person may expect the medication to work faster. Therefore, if it does not work as they would have expected, they would misuse and even abuse the medication. In addition, misuse and abuse of prescription drugs may result from the availability of the drugs. Nowadays, people can easily access the drugs from home. This therefore exposes people to the drugs. People want to try the feeling of these drugs because of the myth that prescription drugs cause a safe high. Many people have misused prescription drugs. According to a research done in America, Americans between the age of twenty-six and fifty years have used prescription drugs without medical reasons and assistance of a medical professional.
Some of the prescriptions do no work well alongside other prescriptions. This would result into side effects that ironically would be dangerous than the disease being treated. The reactions between the medications expand and worsen the situation of a patient. Old people and children are prone to this side effect of the prescription. The prescription may not cure the disease but merely fade away the symptoms of the disease. The drugs cause harm to some degree to the person taking them. Doctors have understated the reactions to avoid scrutiny and public concern.
One prescription drug can cause disruption of many cell functions. This in turn would bring about many other biochemical changes. Therefore, if physician introduces another drug to the patient, many other thousands of biochemical changes take place. A third prescription would cause many more biochemical changes and the process goes on increasing the changes. The drugs subscribed, are to suppress the effects of the other drugs. For example, the second drug is meant to diminish the effects of the first drug and the second subscription is to suppress the effects of the previous. This would repeat severally. Therefore, the prescription poses danger into the lives of many people largely.
Prescription of the antibiotics causes a number of side effects. However, doctors have argued that antibiotics do not kill even the strongest of antibiotics. There are people sick because of the antibiotics prescription. Antibiotics destroy the normal gut flora. This eventually leads to malnutrition and cellular toxicity. Therefore, they cause inevitable harm to humans and the dangers keep rising the more the doctors prescribe the medicine.
On the other hand, there are more dangers related to prescription drug. Drug abuse is one of the ways to have the prescription drugs pose danger into one’s health. Drug abuse would refer to the wrong use of the drugs prescribed (Hanson, Venturelli, & Fleckenstein, 2011). Examples of drug abuse include taking more drugs than the doctor has prescribed, taking medicine prescribed to someone else, and or taking medicine with a drug that was not recommended. Some of the commonly abused drugs include p...