There's no denying the growing opioid epidemic throughout the country.
In fact, the National Institute of Drug Abuse reports that people admitting to illicit drug use shot up from 31.3 percent in 1979 to 48.8 percent in 2015.
That, combined with the growing awareness of the role of prescription pain pills play in it, seems to be leading to a change in the way we'd prefer to manage pain.
According to Gallup, 78 percent of us now prefer alternatives to prescription pain pills if available. That's the highest figure on record.
What was most notable to me in the research was this stat...
The likelihood of prescription pain pills being prescribed for like diagnosis has tripled since 1999.
So, doctors are three times as likely to offer up an opioid for pain as they were 18 years ago.
In what's likely to be related, deaths attributed to opioid addiction are up 400 percent over the same time.
For those opting for alternatives to the pain pills, physical therapy is the most common treatment sought with chiropractic care being the second most common.