Can Alzheimer’s Patients Become Addicted?
September 23, 2008 by Mary Emma Allen
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
In recognition of National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, the Health & Wellness Channel has initiated a project. Various bloggers are writing posts revolving around the Twelve Steps of Recovery designated by Alcoholics Anonymous. The bloggers have selected one or more steps to write about in relation to their own blog topic. Then Liz Lewis at Healthbolt will compile them.
Although I didn’t participate by writing about any of the steps, I considered how this topic might relate to Alzheimer’s patients. Do they become addicted because they are prescribed medications, depressants, stress relievers to enable them to cope?
When my mother was very agitated, even hostile, at the first nursing home where she stayed, her doctor prescribed a sedative that would calm her down. I was new in dealing with a situation like hers, so thought her doctor and the home administrator would know best how to deal with it.
Then when that nursing home had financial difficulties and closed, I had to move Mother to another. There they told me they used such medications only as a last resort and weaned Mother off the sedative. She didn’t become more alert, nor could she coordinate her movements any better. But she wasn’t any worse without the medication. Also, she seemed to stay at that plateau for quite awhile.
Could Mother have become addicted? Would she have become an zombie but I thought it Alzheimer’s. I’m not saying she was over medicated. But there was the possibility of this happening. Do some patients need some medication? Yes, but we, as caregivers need to enlighten ourselves and discover the various options.
For additional information, you may want to check out the series of articles at The Tangled Neuron about Beyond Drugs: Other Ways to Treat Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen
Mary Emma,
This is information that caregivers for Alzheimers and Dementia patients need to take note. A few months ago I became a caregiver for my 81 year old sister who has dementia. We moved her to Georgia from Philadelphia. She is often in pain because of very severe arthritis.
When we moved her here I decided on a geriatrician for her care. Of course, one of the first things he wanted was a list of her medications. He immediately took her off a pain medication that she was on because he said it was addictive and caused hallucinations in elderly people.
Thanks for the heads up.
Thank you, Valerie, for sharing. If we’re involved in the care of someone else, we need to become knowledgeable about the types of medications used and what they will do. (And they often will affect each person differently or in combination with other meds.)
We also need to do this for our own medications. It’s difficult with Alzheimer’s and dementia, because they have hallucinations, distorted views, and paranoia even without drugs.
Then, too, you have to balance out safety…whether a sleeping medicine will keep them in bed at night versus their wandering and getting out of the house or into other danger. It becomes a big responsibility for the caregiver or family member…and the doctor.