What Is A Prescription Drug?

The question “What is a prescription drug?” is one that calls for an in-depth analysis of the nature of these drugs and how they cause addiction.

Prescription drugs are medications meant for use in the treatment of some particular ailment or disorder. They can only be legally obtained from drugstores and pharmacies upon the presentation of a written prescription.

The written prescription is only valid if it is written by a qualified medical practitioner. The nature of prescription drugs differ depending on the conditions and ailments that they are intended to treat, and they are classified into different categories based on the effects that they cause on their users. For instance, certain prescription drugs are classified as stimulants, and may not be appropriate for use in some patients.

Stimulant prescription drugs are those that stimulate the central nervous systems of their users and bring about increased concentration and activity. Other drugs are classified as sedatives. These cause effects that are the direct opposite of the those produced by stimulants. Other prescription drugs that are commonly used medicinally include painkillers and steroids. Each medication is specifically suited for the treatment of a particular medical condition or disease.

In continuing to answer the question of what is a prescription drug, we next have to look at the manner in which the prescription drugs cause addiction among their users. Addiction refers to a condition whereby people engage in compulsive or obsessive drug consumption and are seemingly unable to stop such consumption at will. Usually, any attempt by the addicts to stop consuming the drugs results in the onset of physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms.

The question, however, still remains about how the addiction begins. Most people addicted to prescription drugs are first introduced to the use of the drugs for medicinal purposes. For example, a person suffering from severe depression may be treated using prescription stimulants, or a person who has acute seizures may be treated using prescription sedatives.

When these people continue to use the prescription drugs, they very often end up developing increased tolerance to the drugs and as such, they have to consume more than the prescribed dosage in order to experience the same effects they did before. In a sense, they acquire a ‘taste’ for the drugs. The danger of addiction to prescription drugs increases significantly whenever the drugs are consumed outside the parameters of the prescribed dosage.

Consuming an uncontrolled dosage of a prescription drug causes the users to develop dependency on the substance. The dependency may either be physical or psychological. It is this dependency that develops into full-blown addiction to the prescription drugs, whereby the users of the drugs find that their consumption habits are beyond their control.

Anyone looking for answers to the question of what is a prescription drug may also be interested in learned about treatment options that exist for addiction to these substances.