Opioids (OH-pee-oyds) are medicines used to treat pain. They're also called narcotics. When you take them for more than a few days, they may cause serious problems.
If you take opioids every day for a long time they may stop working, and your pain may be as bad as it was before you started taking them. If this happens, you have built up a tolerance to the medicine.
Your body may start to depend on opioids. That means that if you don't take them, or if you take less than your usual amount, you may have withdrawal. Withdrawal can feel like a bad case of the flu. You may sweat, have diarrhea, throw up, or have trouble sleeping. You may ache all over. You might even feel like you will die, but people rarely die from withdrawal.
Some people become addicted to opioids. The more you take, the more likely this is to happen. Here are some signs of being addicted:
Yes. If you take opioids every day for a long time, your pain can get worse. It can even cause pain in parts of your body where you didn't have pain before. Other problems you can get from taking opioids for a long time are:
