Why Women May Be More Vulnerable to Abusing Opiates

Women may be more vulnerable to abusing opiates. That's one inference from the latest research into differences between how men and women's brains process pain, according to Anne Murphy, an associate professor at Georgia State University's Neuroscience Institute, who co-authored a study that appeared this year in the Journal of Neuroscience. Murphy's team of researchers found women's brains are more active than men's brains in regions where pain processing occurs. The findings may help to explain a higher incidence of chronic and inflammatory pain conditions like fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis among women.

The study also noted that morphine, a primary opiate treatment for chronic pain conditions, is significantly less effective at treating moderate to severe pain in women. Women require "almost twice as much morphine as males to produce comparable pain relief," Hillary Doyle, a graduate student from GSU's Neuroscience Institute, said in a GSU news release.

Women's Higher Risks for Opiate Abuse

These findings -- that women are more likely than men to have chronic pain but are less responsive to opiates like morphine -- correlate with at least three risk factors for opiate abuse that appeared in an earlier report by the American Society of Addiction Medicine:

-- Women are more likely to be prescribed prescription painkillers -- and at higher doses than men. (More than half of female opiate addicts, as opposed to a third of male opiate addicts, say their dependency started with a doctor's prescription.)

-- Women are also more likely to use these opiate drugs (at higher doses) for longer periods than men.

-- And women, in the words of the same ASAM report, "may become dependent on prescription pain relievers more quickly than men."

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Other Reasons Women May Get Hooked on Opiates Faster Than Men

Regarding this last risk factor, research summarized by the National Institute on Drug Abuse has turned up preliminary clues as to why women may get hooked on opiates faster than men. On the one hand, rates of illicit drug abuse are higher among men than among women. On the other hand, women not only are just as likely as men to become addicted, they may be more susceptible to cravings and relapse, which are key phases of the addiction cycle.

A study in the scientific journal Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology helped explain that gender discrepancy this way:

The rates of drug abuse are currently lower in women than in men. Nevertheless, the number of women using and abusing prescription and illegal drugs is on the rise. Adult men are two to three times more likely than women to have a drug abuse/dependence disorder, but this current gender difference may reflect differences in opportunity, rather than vulnerability to drug use.

In fact, with respect to vulnerability to opiate abuse, women seem to have a corner on the market, the same study suggested, by pointing to the following findings:

-- Some studies of heroin addicts found women escalated their heroin use more quickly than men and became addicted in a shorter period of time.

-- Rates of opiate-related overdose death among women are significantly outpacing those among men -- so much so that a CDC report on the subject called it a "growing epidemic, especially among women." (As illustration, between the years 1999 and 2010, prescription painkiller deaths rose by 400 percent in women; prescription painkiller deaths rose among men also, but at the notably slower rate of 237 percent.)

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Women's Higher Pain Levels

The GSU study follows on the heels of earlier research suggesting women feel more pain than men do:

-- A 2005 study at the University of Bath revealed that when compared with men, women report more pain throughout the course of their lifetime and tend to experience pain in more areas of the body, more often and for a longer duration.

-- In another study, women suffered from higher levels of pain following knee surgery than did men. (In addition to chronic pain, acute pain after surgery is another situation where painkillers are often prescribed.)

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Meanwhile, the opiate epidemic has showed no sign of letting up. In fact, 2015 (the most recent year for which there is data) was reportedly the worst year on record for drug overdose deaths. That year, more than 50,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, most of which (33,000) were heroin or opiate-related, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Linda Williams, executive director of Beach House Center for Recovery, oversees and manages the daily operations of the treatment center including clinical, nursing, medical, utilization review, maintenance and client care. Linda has over 20 years of management experience in the human services and fitness industries.