What can you do if prescribed oxycodone is causing anxiety?
Has a doctor prescribed oxycodone to you and you are concerned about having an issue with anxiety? If you suffer from anxiety disorder or panic attacks, you will likely be concerned about medications that may increase your anxiety levels.
Anxiety-related disorders are already difficult to tolerate. Drugs and supplements that cause anxiety are best avoided by people who are already struggling with heightened stress levels.
While there is anxiety medication for panic disorder and anxiety symptoms, such as benzodiazepine drugs, it is best to avoid these drugs. Benzodiazepines can cause significant withdrawal symptoms, and they are not safe to take with prescription opioids.
If you ask your doctor what side effects oxycodone may cause, they might not mention anxiety. Oxycodone has many potential side effects, but anxiety is not a side effect or adverse reaction that always comes to mind.
In fact, anxiety is a known side effect of oxycodone. While you may think of oxycodone as a downer medication that will sedate and relax you, many people who take it will experience higher anxiety levels due to the effects of oxycodone.
Does oxycodone help with anxiety?
Oxycodone is a semi-synthetic opioid drug that works mainly on the mu opioid receptor. It is a controlled drug that can be prescribed by doctors to treat acute and chronic pain.
As a rule, a prescribed opioid should never be taken to treat anxiety. No doctor would ever recommend an opioid medication for treating an anxiety disorder.
Even on the streets, for people struggling with cocaine addiction, they are more likely to take a benzodiazepine than an opioid pain medication. In fact, cocaine dealers are known to give out or sell the benzo, Xanax, along with cocaine or crack.
However, in recent times, many prescription pills sold on the streets are fake pills, including fake oxycodone and fake Xanax. The Xanax bar that a street user takes very likely contains the synthetic opioid, fentanyl.
Clearly, for someone abusing a prescription opioid, they are going to get some relief from anxiety, at least in the beginning. Yet, using an opioid pain medicine to self-treat stress can quickly lead to a serious opioid addiction and opioid use disorder.
Additionally, when prescription opioid use becomes opioid abuse, the drug user will likely experience opioid withdrawal when they run out of their opiate drug supply. Oxycodone use can lead to oxycodone abuse, which typically leads to oxycodone withdrawal.
Oxycodone withdrawal includes significant anxiety as a withdrawal symptom, so the person engaging in opiate drug abuse finds themselves in a viscious circle. They go into withdrawal, and then take more oxycodone, or another opioid, to feel normal again.
This is how oxycodone addiction develops. Oxycodone addiction can lead to mental health problems and further substance abuse with other opioids, including heroin and fentanyl.
Does Percocet cause anxiety?
Did you know that Percocet is a brand-name medication that contains oxycodone? Percocet is a combination of oxycodone and tylenol, or acetaminophen.
Oxycodone is an opioid agonist that activates the mu opioid receptor. As an opioid drug, oxycodone provides pain relief, and it may also cause euphoria as a side effect, which might be described as a “high” feeling.
Other than euphoria, Percocet, and other forms of oxycodone can cause constipation, headaches, dizziness, sedation, mood swings, and many other possible side effects. Anxiety is also on the long list of possible side effects.
Some well known brands of oxycodone, other than Percocet, are OxyContin, Percodan, Roxicodone, Xtampza ER, and OxyIR. Each brand contains either oxycodone alone, or in combination with another drug.
Oxycodone is available in fast-acting tablets, controlled-release tablets, and very fast-acting liquid. Any form of oxycodone, regardless of the brand name, can cause anxiety as a side effect.
Is oxycodone a sleeping pill?
While oxycodone may make people sleepy, being a narcotic, it should never be used as a sleep aid. No doctor would prescribe oxycodone for the purpose of falling asleep.
In fact, oxycodone may have the opposite effect on some people. Rather than sedating them, it gives them energy and wakefulness.
Some people who get addicted to oxycodone claim that it helps them to wake up and get things done. They fly through housework, cleaning up the house with the help of an energetic percocet high.
For some Percocet addicts, they think of the drug name as reflecting the stimulating effect the drug has on them. It “perks” them up.
As a sedating narcotic, it may seem counterintuitive that oxycodone would give a person energy, but we are all different, and the drug is known to affect people differently. You can imagine that if oxycodone can give a person energy, it can also cause irritability and anxiety.
When is it a good thing that oxycodone relieves anxiety?
While oxycodone addiction and OxyContin addiction is a serious problem, oxycodone does have legitimate medical use for treating physical pain. Since the medication is an opioid with a high abuse potential, it should be reserved for treating severe pain.
For example, patients undergoing cancer treatment may experience severe pain. Additionally, there are people with chronic pain syndromes for whom nothing else works, other than an opioid medication.
Chronic pain, and acute pain, cause significant anxiety. When a person is in pain, they worry about the pain never going away. Pain is often accompanied by stress and anxiety.
When the pain is relieved with medical treatment, which may include oxycodone, the anxiety also improves. So, while the intent was not to relieve anxiety, but to treat pain, anxiety is also treated by helping with the underlying cause of the anxiety.
Can oxycodone cause anxiety for a person who is addicted to it?
In addition to the drug itself causing anxiety as a side effect, oxycodone addiction can be a source of anxiety. Much of the anxiety associated with oxycodone addiction is related to the difficulty in getting more oxycodone to feed the addiction.
Oxycodone addiction, for some, starts with an oxycodone prescription. When a doctor prescribes the opioid drug for pain, and a small percentage of patients may develop an addiction.
For others, the addiction starts by using the drug recreationally. There may be a prescription bottle of Percocet, Roxicodone, or OxyContin in the house, so there is easy access to the drug.
A friend, acquaintance, or coworker may have an oxycodone prescription and encourage misuse of the drug. However, when the initial supply runs out, the person who becomes addicted will be looking around for more supply of their new drug of choice.
Unfortunately, when a person turns to street dealers for oxycodone pills, they may believe that they are getting oxycodone, but they are often getting fake pills. Fake oxycodone pills usually contain a synthetic fentanyl analog and no oxycodone.
Does fentanyl cause anxiety?
People who have been addicted to opioids, such as oxycodone, and have gone through addiction treatment, may have fentanyl anxiety, simply knowing that the street opioid game has changed since they quit using opioids. They realize that the blue oxycodone pills they remember are no longer safe.
In addiction recovery terminology, there is something known as a reservation. A reservation means that a person in recovery still holds a secret plan, that they may return to using drugs one day.
A reservation may be conditional, such as if the person finishes school, retires from their job, or visits a particular location or friend. Or it may be that after a certain amount of time, they plan to celebrate and try using opioids one more time.
Reservations are often deadly, and they never work out as planned. Even when an addiction seems to be cured and long gone, it can come back quickly.
Still, an oxycodone addict likes to dream about one day taking one of those little blue pills again. Imagine the anxiety they feel, knowing that most, if not all, of the little blue pills sold on the streets are now filled with unknown amounts of Mexican fentanyl analogs.
Just the idea of fake oxycodone pills, filled with fentanyl, can cause anxiety. Both people in recovery and people in active addiction may have fake pill anxiety.
What is the best way to address oxycodone anxiety?
Getting back to the anxiety side effect of oxycodone, when a patient asks their doctor what they can do about the oxycodone anxiety side effect, what are some solutions doctors might recommend? How will the doctor help the oxycodone patient who enjoys having less pain, but does not like the anxiety side effect?
First, the doctor should avoid recommending benzodiazepines, such as Xanax, Valium, Ativan, or Klonopin to treat oxycodone anxiety. Benzos should not be combined with opioids in most cases, especially for the purpose of treating an oxycodone anxiety side effect.
In many cases, when a patient experiences opioid side effects, the best solution is to reduce the dosage of the opioid. For example, if a patient is taking oxycodone 10mg four times daily, the doctor may try reducing the dosage to 5mg four times daily.
Surprisingly, the effectiveness of an opioid as a pain relieving medication may be just as good at a lower dosage. While the patient may worry that oxycodone at half the daily dosage will be less effective, they may find that it works just as well, or well enough, with less side effects.
Another option is to switch to a different prescribed opioid or other treatment plan.
It is possible that oxycodone anxiety may be a specific side effect for a particular patient that will not occur if they are switched to another prescription opioid. There are many opioid medications to choose from.
A doctor may choose to switch the patient from oxycodone to hydromorphone, morphine, hydrocodone, oxymorphone, or one of many other prescription opioid pain pills. While these opiate and opioid drugs work very similarly, they are different enough that switching may help alleviate side effects.
Read more: Hydrocodone Vs Oxycodone: Is A Percocet Pill Stronger Than A Vicodin Pill?
If switching opioids to avoid oxycodone induced anxiety is not an option, or if it is not effective, it might be best to consider another treatment plan altogether. There are many pain relieving therapies that do not involve the use of opioid medication.
In fact, it is best to explore other options before getting started with an opioid, whenever possible. Opioids should not be the first line treatment for pain management.
However, when a person is in severe pain, it is possible that a doctor will start an opioid prescription to give the patient short term relief. After the patient is out of pain, then the doctor will help the patient to explore other pain relieving options, so the opioid can be discontinued before physical dependence develops.
Can Suboxone help to treat anxiety caused by oxycodone?
Suboxone is a brand name medication that contains the partial opioid receptor agonist and full antagonist, buprenorphine. Buprenorphine is a unique drug that is classified as an opioid, but it is very different in its properties.
While other opioids bounce on and off of opioid receptors many times per second, buprenorphine binds and blocks the receptor, while also partially activating it. Buprenorphine, in the form of Suboxone, is used to treat opioid addiction.
One property of Suboxone that is unique is that patients tend not to develop tolerance. Tolerance is where the drug stops working, so the doctor prescribes a higher dosage to help the patient get the same effect.
Patients frequently develop tolerance to oxycodone, and as they take higher dosages, they are more likely to experience side effects, including anxiety. Would it be possible for a doctor to switch a patient to Suboxone to get the benefits of Suboxone?
While Suboxone also has side effects, including possible anxiety, the fact that it does not often cause tolerance means that a patient will be able to continue it at a stable dosage with the same effect. In fact, many patients find that they can take less and still get the same effect.
Suboxone is thought of as an addiction treatment medication, but it also helps with pain. Some pain management doctors have transitioned their patients on oxycodone or other opioids over to Suboxone or another form of buprenorphine.
It is possible that when a patient is transitioned from oxycodone to buprenorphine, whether it is for treatment of oxycodone dependence, or for ongoing pain management, that the symptom of oxycodone anxiety will improve, or fully resolve. In fact, many side effects and complications of oxycodone therapy may resolve by initiating buprenorphine therapy.
Read More: Can Oxycodone withdrawal kill you?
What is the first step to take if you have anxiety caused by oxycodone treatment?
If you are having side effects caused by oxycodone, including oxycodone induced anxiety, the first step to take is to contact the doctor who is prescribing oxycodone. The oxycodone prescriber will likely make an adjustment to the treatment plan to help improve the anxiety side effect.
Very likely, the doctor will reduce the dosage of oxycodone. Or, they may change oxycodone to another, similar opiate pain medication. We also provide benzodiazepine addiction treatment, alcoholism treatment, sublocade treatment, and subutex treatment to provide the care and support you deserve for a brighter, healthier future.
It is also possible that the doctor will come up with other treatment alternatives to help improve their patient’s anxiety. The doctor may even recommend waiting to see if the anxiety resolves on its own over time.
Sometimes, side effects from medications do get better over time. If the patient is able to tolerate the side effects and continue treatment, they may see improvement without making any changes to their therapy.
