♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together,
we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- All right, Brad, this is actually a serious subject.
We're going to go over the signs that someone you know
may be addicted to opiates, which are pain pills.
- Right.
- Strong pain pills.
- Right.
Like OxyContin, oxycodone.
- Tramadol.
I'll put a list of some of the common ones down below,
so you can maybe see if that person is on it.
But I've had personal experience with this in that
my mother-in-law became addicted and dependent upon opiates.
And it was a real problem, Brad.
It was a real problem getting her off,
and the doctor seemed indifferent.
He goes, "I have patients who've been on this for years."
So it's just, I'm hoping that we're starting
to see the turnaround
and that people are becoming more and more aware.
You have a stat here right, or?
- Right.
This is from a local newspaper here in La Crosse.
It goes, "We must alter our view of opiates.
More people now die in Wisconsin
from drug overdoses than car crashes.
Prescription opiates, not heroin,
are the top killer in our state.
In fact, more die from prescription painkillers
than from heroin and cocaine combined."
- Wow.
- "Opiates are appropriately prescribed
in some circumstances,
but they must only be used exactly how they are prescribed."
- Right.
So we're just going to go over some of the signs,
and I can tell you my mother-in-law had about five of these.
So the first one.
She became,
again, I love my mother-in-law, but (laughs)
- Say it, Bob.
- She's sometimes irritable,
but she became very irritable, very hostile.
Yeah.
She may be watching.
And the family members
really didn't pick up on it right away,
which was interesting.
They just said, "You know, grandma's really crabby."
I go, "No, something's not right."
The second thing,
lack of interest in previously enjoyed activities.
You know, she used to love her gardening and all that.
She just seemed to not care about that anymore.
- Sure.
- Kind of a detachment
from family, friends, spouses, and children.
I mean, she became different.
She just, yeah, didn't get involved in our conversations.
- Right.
- And she just seemed like, not even there some sometimes.
- Sure.
OK.
- So decreased ability to concentrate, forgetfulness,
which quite often, you know, she was getting older,
so we kind of attributed it to that.
- Right.
- Again, that's why it's really hard to tell
on these because they're so subtle.
- Right.
- They're just kind of an enhancement quite often
of things that you're seeing already.
- Right.
- Weight gain or weight loss.
She actually had lost some weight,
which, you know, whenever someone loses weight
and they're not trying.
- It's not a good sign.
- Yeah.
It's not a good sign.
There's something going on.
This one, I didn't see on her,
sleepiness or nodding out.
- Right.
- Obvious euphoria.
I didn't really see that either with her.
Difficult problems at work.
She is no longer working,
but I can certainly see where someone,
if they had all these other characteristics,
can't you see where that's going to affect their work?
- Sure.
You bet.
- And obviously financial troubles.
Sometimes it's because they're paying
for their prescription drugs.
- Right.
And they may be acquiring them illegally.
Not from the pharmacy, but ...
- Right.
- You know, there's quite a market out there for, for these.
- I guess the whole thing,
one of the points I wanna make here is you cannot
rely on your physician to monitor this at this point.
I mean, a lot of 'em are very cavalier about this,
and they're like, "No, she's, she's having pain."
And there's a lot of other ways to control pain.
We've done a video.
We did a video on that you should try
physical therapy first on these things.
- Right.
- Before you try all these high,
heavy-duty pain medications.
- Right.
And we're gonna do another video
on alternative pain management aside
from pain killers like this.
- Excellent.
- And that's gonna be coming up, Bob.
- All right.
Boy, we keep 'em titillated here, don't we?
- Titillated. Good, Bob.
- All right. Thanks for watching.