Women enter emergency rooms every three minutes, due to prescription painkiller abuse.

While the opioid epidemic spreads across the country, more and more addicts are becoming addicted merely by virtue of stepping into a doctor’s office. Prescription opioids are being abused at higher rates each year, but what many don’t realize is that women have a higher risk of becoming addicted. This is for a large variety of reasons, all of which have surfaced in the national discussion of the opioid epidemic.

The United States consumes more opioids than any other country in the world; a whopping 207 prescriptions was numbered in 2013, an increase from 76 million prescriptions in 1991.

Women are being prescribed painkillers more often, and overdose deaths have increased exponentially as a result. The amount of overdoses from prescription opioids increased five times from 1999 to 2010, and now, “Women ages 45 to 54 have the highest risk of dying from a prescription painkiller overdose.”

For women, the difficulties in overcoming opioid addiction are significantly different from that of men’s. The female struggle with opioid addiction is distinct and possibly more severe. For example, women are more likely to have chronic pain than men; as with fibromyalgia, women are “four to seven times more likely to be affected by the condition.” Women are more often diagnosed with chronic pain, putting them at a greater risk for being prescribed painkillers as a solution.

And in America, 18 women die every day of a prescription painkiller overdose.

Overall, prescription pain medication is becoming more and more relied upon for treatment, as exemplified in the fact that “[p]rescription pain medication increased more than 400 percent among women from 1999 to 2010.”

Women still struggle with the gender bias that characterizes the process of seeking treatment for opioid addiction: it is believed that doctors typically take female pain less seriously due to the belief that women are too emotional and sensitive. For example, “one recent study revealed that physicians were 22 times more likely to recommend knee surgery as an arthritis treatment for men than they were for women.”

It would seem that in treating this gender-specific problem, confronting bias and misjudgment is yet another step in unpacking the endless opioid drug epidemic.