It is a sad state of affairs in our country today that out of the 41,340 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2011, 22,810 or 55 percent of those were related to prescription drugs (Center for Disease Control, 2011). 55 percent! Out of those 22,810 deaths, 16,917 (74 percent!) involved prescription pain killers.In such a sad situation, you don’t want to blame anyone because many factors are involved. However, the root of this problem lies with over-prescribing these pharmaceuticals. Although it took an overdose epidemic to get their attention, most legitimate medical doctors are thinking twice before prescribing pain killers, especially to those patients who habitually seek them.Don’t get me wrong, I understand that some pharmaceuticals are needed in some situations. However, I see more than one patient who come in and say they’ve been in pain for several months. They’ve seen a doc, who prescribed them pain killers, but guess what, when the pain killer prescription expires, the patient’s pain comes back. That’s because pain killers may dull the pain, but they don’t cure the pain. There is an underlying cause to that pain that is not going to go away with the use of painkillers.Identifying and treating the root of that pain, which is what we do at Homberg Chiropractic, is more effective in the long run than taking a pill. Pain killers are just a band-aid for the real problem – a highly addictive and dangerous band-aid.