Fentanyl Addiction: Short-Term and Long-Term Effects
Fentanyl produces sedation, pain relief, nausea, confusion, drowsiness and overdose in the short term, and opioid use disorder, dependence, liver and kidney damage and hypoxia over long-term use.
Misuse of opioids, including fentanyl, is a rising concern in the United States and worldwide. Addiction to opioid pain medications, referred to as the opioid epidemic, has reached alarming rates across the U.S. Each year more than 2 million Americans, and 15 million people worldwide, struggle with the misuse of prescription opioids and heroin.
Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death in the U.S. among adults under 50, and opioids including fentanyl account for more than half of all drug overdose deaths. More than 92,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2020.
What Is Fentanyl?
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid approximately 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, prescribed for chronic and severe pain, and now the drug most involved in U.S. overdose deaths.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse records fentanyl as a powerful synthetic opioid, similar to morphine but 50 to 100 times more potent. Fentanyl treats patients with chronic pain or severe pain, especially after surgery. Prescription fentanyl carries the brand names Actiq, Duragesic and Sublimaze, and clinicians administer it as a shot, a patch on the arm, or a throat lozenge.
Because fentanyl is so potent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Guide for Chronic Pain directs providers to prescribe the lowest effective dosage of opioids, and only the minimum amount necessary.
Synthetic opioids including fentanyl are the drugs most involved in drug overdose deaths in America. NIDA records that share rising for over a decade, with 59% of opioid-related deaths involving fentanyl in 2017 against 14.3% in 2010. Illicit fentanyl accounts for most fentanyl overdoses and deaths. Illicit fentanyl is manufactured for the illegal drug market and appears as a powder, pill, eyedrop or nasal spray.
Healthcare professionals consider prescription fentanyl safe and effective in a monitored medical setting, and fentanyl carries a risk of misuse even when taken as directed.
What Are the Short-Term Effects of Fentanyl?
Fentanyl produces sedation, pain relief, nausea and vomiting, euphoria, confusion, drowsiness and overdose, and the effects arrive within minutes of the dose.
Because of its potency, the short-term effects of fentanyl arrive soon after someone takes the drug, and injection delivers them faster than other routes. Patients take prescribed fentanyl for chronic pain, and illicit fentanyl produces euphoria and deep relaxation.
There are 7 short-term effects of fentanyl:
- sedation
- pain relief
- nausea and vomiting
- euphoria
- confusion
- drowsiness
- overdose
Fentanyl produces different effects in different people, depending on height, age, weight and health. Overdose is the most serious of these effects, because the amount of fentanyl that produces one is very small.
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What Are the Long-Term Effects of Fentanyl?
What Physical Damage Does Fentanyl Cause?
Long-term fentanyl use damages the brain, the liver and the kidneys, and it depresses breathing enough to starve tissue of oxygen.
The adverse effects of long-term opioid use are varied, and long-term fentanyl misuse damages the entire body, from the brain to the organs, including tissue damage that reaches limb loss.
Continued use of fentanyl produces physical dependence and opioid use disorder.
There are 4 long-term effects of fentanyl use:
- opioid use disorder
- dependence
- liver and kidney damage or failure
- respiratory changes (hypoxia)
Extended fentanyl use depresses the respiratory system, which reduces the oxygen distributed throughout the body over time. That lack of oxygen is hypoxia. Hypoxia produces irreversible tissue damage, including brain damage and damage to the liver, digestive and respiratory systems.
What Mental Health Effects Does Fentanyl Produce?
Long-term fentanyl use produces depression, anxiety, reduced capacity for pleasure and loss of emotional regulation, and it worsens existing mental health conditions.
Long-term fentanyl use impairs mental function, produces mental health conditions and worsens conditions a person already has.
There are 5 mental health effects of long-term fentanyl use:
- increased depression
- anxiety
- reduced ability to feel pleasure
- inability to regulate emotion
- brain changes
How Does Fentanyl Change the Brain?
Fentanyl binds the opioid receptors that govern pain and emotion, floods the reward system with dopamine, and starves brain tissue of oxygen when breathing slows.
Fentanyl attaches to opioid receptors concentrated in the brain regions that control pain and emotion. That binding drives dopamine release in the brain’s reward center, which produces the euphoria that reinforces repeated use.
The respiratory depression fentanyl produces reduces the oxygen reaching brain tissue. Sustained hypoxia produces irreversible brain damage.
Fentanyl use also damages memory and cognition. Scans in a 2018 study revealed lesioning and brain damage in patients who had misused fentanyl, and those patients reported cognitive problems resembling amnesia.
Can You Reverse a Fentanyl Overdose?
Naloxone reverses a fentanyl overdose when given within minutes, and fentanyl’s potency means reversal takes more than one dose.
Fentanyl reaches users disguised as ecstasy, cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine, so the person taking it believes they are taking something else. That disguise makes the cause of an overdose hard to identify, because nobody knows which drugs were taken.
Naloxone, sold as Narcan, reverses an opioid overdose when administered within minutes of the overdose. Naloxone works by binding the opioid receptors in the brain and blocking the effects of fentanyl. Fentanyl is stronger than most opioids, so reversing it takes more than one dose of naloxone.
Call 911 immediately where you believe that you or someone else has overdosed on fentanyl or another drug. That is a medical emergency.
What Does Fentanyl Withdrawal and Detox Involve?
Medically supervised detox manages fentanyl withdrawal, which produces extreme cravings that drive relapse without 24-hour support.
A medically supervised withdrawal program, also called inpatient detoxification, is the route for patients who are moderately to severely dependent on opioids such as fentanyl. Withdrawal from opioids produces extreme cravings, and those cravings drive relapse when a person attempts to manage withdrawal alone.
Residential medical detox programs provide 24-hour supervision and medical support, which reduces the risk of relapse and improves outcomes through this period.
What Are the Signs of Fentanyl Use?
Fentanyl use shows as declining performance at school or work, physical health changes, neglected appearance, secretive behavior and unexplained financial trouble.
Signs of fentanyl use are hard to identify, because many of them resemble ordinary moodiness or anxiety.
There are 5 signs to look for:
- decline in personal life, especially school or work, including a drop in grades or work performance
- physical health problems, including sudden weight loss or gain and lack of energy
- neglected appearance
- sudden changes in behavior, including more secretive behavior or drastic changes in relationships with family and friends
- financial trouble, including sudden requests for money without explanation, missing money, or items disappearing from the home
The signs of drug use vary by the substance being used.
How Does Riverside Recovery of Tampa Treat Opioid Use Disorder?
Riverside Recovery of Tampa treats fentanyl addiction across a full continuum of care in a medically monitored environment.
Fentanyl is a dangerous and powerful opioid, and addressing fentanyl addiction takes a comprehensive treatment program. Treatment is available whether the addiction arose from prescribed use or illicit use.
Riverside Recovery of Tampa provides a full continuum of care in a safe, medically monitored environment. Our clinical and medical teams provide the individualized care needed to heal from fentanyl addiction.
Contact our admissions team today to learn more about our medical detox and recovery programs for opioid addiction.