9781422274286

Although doctors had instructed Ledger to take the prescription painkillers, he should not have been taking them together. These medicines depress the central nervous system, slowing a person’s breathing and heart rate. If too much is taken, those systems will simply stop working, resulting in death. Kim Ledger, Keith’s father, told reporters that his son “mixed drugs for a chest infection with sleeping tablets and that is literally what slowed his system down sufficiently enough to put him to sleep forever.” The tragic accidental death of a talented actor focused attention on the scourge of opioid painkillers. Accidental drug overdoses involving opioids have become the leading cause of death in the United States. An American is more likely to die of a painkiller overdose than they are to die in a car crash, according to the National Safety Council. “From 1999 to 2017, almost 218,000 people died in the United States from overdoses related to prescription opioids,” reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2018. “Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids were five times higher in 2017 than in 1999.” Medical authorities within the federal government have called the abuse of opioids a serious epidemic that threatens the health of the nation. Opioid Painkillers Painkillers are medicines for relieving pain. Today, this term often refers to a class of powerful prescription drugs called opioids. Some of these drugs, such as morphine and codeine, are created from a natural source, the opium poppy. Others have been chemically formulated in a lab, but they affect the brain and central nervous system in the same way. The most commonly prescribed opioid painkillers today include oxycodone, hydrocodone, and meperidine. These are sometimes combined with other drugs.

9

Who Uses Painkillers?