There is no epidemic of opiate misuse that leads to addiction — any more than alcohol, crack, methamphetamine or any other drug has ever infected the masses.

Don't get me wrong; prescription pain medication is a big problem right now. In alarming numbers, people are hooked on the doctor's prescription or stealing from somebody else's medicine cabinet. And when that fix is no longer the option, heroin becomes their drug of no-choice. Heroin is no longer the drug of the strung-out junkie or tenant of the inner-city shooting gallery.

But as with all the other drugs that have grabbed headlines over the decades, jump-started public policy and worried parents, the opiate scourge will subside, I predict. It will always be a problem for people who get addicted; it just won't provoke a groundswell of action that achieves meaningful change. Addiction has been around since man crushed grapes. It is an illness that won't disappear.

There is, however, an epidemic of complacency that infects the professionals who are in a position to do something about opiates, if only they could understand their role in both the problem and the solution. Consider this:

A woman in long-term recovery from addiction slips on an icy sidewalk and wrenches her back. She gets help that includes pain relief via a bottle of 30 oxycodone pills, and though she knows she should share her medical history of addiction with the orthopedic specialist, the newfound buzz compels her to keep her mouth shut, except to take more meds. She feigns more pain and gets more meds. No questions asked — until one day the OB-GYN who knows her the best looks in the statewide prescription-monitoring database to find a dangerous pattern of refills. "You'd better talk to your recovery sponsor," her doctor implores. But the doctor never follows up. And besides, the woman tells me later, "what other medical problem has a doctor telling the patient to talk to her sponsor when what she has is a full-blown relapse of her medical illness — addiction?"

The woman is trying to escape the vortex spun by the pain meds. She knows what to do. She just can't do it. "I suppose I could call the doctor back and remind her, but now I'm too scared." In the meantime, she's still feigning the pain. And getting the meds.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the parents of an academic all-star who stole the hydrocodone from the family's medicine cabinet. They did hide the pill bottle. But the teenager still comes home high, likely fueled by the medicine in his friends' homes. "Our therapist counseled us that we couldn't violate our son's trust with his friends, that we couldn't tell the other parents what our son was doing in their home." The parents want to believe that the therapist knows best. In the meantime, their son is not any better.

Addicts and alcoholics are sick people who don't get better until they become part of the solution, not the problem. Usually, they need help to get there. Complacency by doctors, therapists and other professionals doesn't help.

William Moyers is the vice president of public affairs and community relations for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and the author of "Broken," his best-selling memoirs. His book "Now What? An Insider's Guide to Addiction and Recovery" was published last year. Please send your questions to William Moyers at wmoyers@hazelden.org. To find out more about William Moyers and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.