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Opioid Overdoses: How Can CBD Help?

Written by Julie Godard

Drug overdose deaths are on the rise all over the world, with the United States leading at 120 deaths per day.

Many deaths are due to opioid overdoses, and addiction to opioids is driven by severe pain, surgeries, or other chronic health conditions. People become addicted to opioids rapidly because they are synthetic versions of heroin, synthesized from opium. This means patients can quickly become so addicted to the pain relieving properties of opioids that they begin to seek heroin on the streets, which often leads to deaths.

Why are There So Many Opioid Addicts?

While most people would never consider themselves opium or heroin addicts because their medications come from doctor prescriptions, the effects on the human brain are the same as that of heroin: addiction, and in some cases hyperalgesia, a condition where opioids cause pain they are meant to prevent. To make it worse, pharmaceutical companies have pushed doctors to prescribe opioids in record and unsafe amounts over the years, driving needless addiction up. Sounds awful, doesn’t it?

How Can CBD Help Patients?

There are alternatives out there! People suffering with chronic pain or recovering from painful or difficult surgeries have options — one of which is cannabidiol, or CBD. Cannabis and its derivatives have been used for pain management for 5,000 years. In other words, it has been time-tested and approved for centuries. It’s clear that opioid addicts and medical patients need a reliable remedy that can replace opioids, help them avoid addiction, and still relieve pain and symptoms caused by disease, surgery, and illness. CBD does not have psychoactive effects on the mind, although it makes some people drowsy.

How are Opioid Addicts Being Helped with CBD?

Several companies are creating painkillers from CBD, including Intec Pharma, Nemus Bioscience, and Axim Biotechnologies. The problem is the worst in the United States, where 100 million people are addicted to opiates or heroin, and President Trump revealed a plan to combat opioids on March 19th which included death sentences for drug dealers. Whether a plan of this type will help remains to be seen, but in the meantime patients may seek out CBD themselves and use it to treat pain and symptoms.

Where Can I Get CBD for My Symptoms?

In Israel, the home of legal medical cannabis research and the largest CBD patient database in the world, Tikun Olam and other medical cannabis companies like CBD Testers have been working for years to help patients suffering from cancer, PTSD, Crohn’s disease, Tourette syndrome and Parkinson’s disease relieve symptoms. In the United States, locations where medical cannabis is legal have reported fewer opiate deaths. While many patients in the U.S. must wait for the FDA to approve its first medical cannabis-based painkiller, patients can order CBD and test it out for themselves. Intec, based in Israel, has already begun testing a painkiller made with CBD and THC extracts.

Everyone should look at the options before taking opioids, or if suffering from pain related to surgery, ask doctors if there are alternatives. No one wants to be addicted, especially when there are other ways to treat pain naturally and without the harm caused by opioids.

[Featured Image Credit: Pixabay]

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About the author

Julie Godard