Opioid Patients: A Theoretical Analysis

There is controversy of doctors overprescribing opioids to patients with chronic pain, which results in to patients becoming addicted and dependent on the drug. In 2012, Eric L Garland conducted a study in which where he researched the correlation between an opioid-dependent group and how a non-dependent group. He supported his study by including many statistics, significant information, and how accurate the data was. However, this study does not provide a valid argument that opioids are detrimental to our health. The research that was taken in this data was to see the correlation between participants taking opioids, and how opioids influenced their daily life compared to non-dependent opioid participants. Garland supported his research
One type of measures that was used, was the dot probe task. The main use of the “dot probe task is to measure opioid attentional bias” (614). Attentional bias is how the tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts. Usually, the dot probe test is presented on a computer screen that is 15 inches. On the screen it begins “with a fixation cross presented for five hundred milliseconds…pairs of photos containing one opioid-related image and one neutral image are presented” (614). The neutral images included pictures of different types of household items and opioid images consisted of images that were chosen to show many different forms of opioids. The image would stay on the screen for about either 200 or 2000 milliseconds and the participants would have to specified where the location of the target was either good or bad by pressing two different keys on the keyboard. This test evaluates which group notice the neutral or opioids influenced images. The opioid-dependent group was quicker to notice the images of different forms of opioids than the non-dependent group. Having the opioid-dependent group being quicker to decipher which image was opioids influenced concluded that the participants in that group have taken that drug in that form
It states that “there was no significant between-groups difference…the pattern and significance of results did not differ when persons taking tramadol or suboxone” (615). Which meant that doing various studies between opioid-dependent and non-dependent opioid groups didn’t have a considerable distinction except that the opioid-dependent has a higher level of craving of opioids. Even though Garland had many experiments in his study, he lacked the one main rule for collecting data. He only went through one trial of each and every experiment including “dot probe task, opioid craving, pain severity, and relief from pain treatment” (614) which cause his data to become untrustworthy and