Oxycontin did not cause his hearing loss. You are conflating two issues.
FReegards!
Posted on 01/30/2019 6:16:51 AM PST by GailA
Gross over-regulation of doctors in their prescription of opioid pain relievers is driving hundreds out of practice, deserting their patients to agony, disability and sometimes death by suicide. However, despite the protestations of many State and Federal regulators, “the opioid problem” isn’t from over-prescription. Rates of opioid related mortality from all sources are almost entirely unrelated to rates of physician prescribing. The contribution of medically managed opioids is so small that it gets lost in the noise of street drugs. Published data of the CDC prove this reality beyond any reasonable contradiction.
In the relatively few deaths where a prescription-type drug is found in postmortem toxicology screens, it is rarely found alone. Instead, it will be accompanied by multiple illegal street drugs and/or alcohol. Likewise, morphine found in such testing maybe a byproduct of heroin metabolism, rather than a prescribed drug. Although we can’t say this is “proof” of anything, it seems at least plausible that significant numbers of deaths attributed by county medical examiners to prescription drugs are in fact the consequences of suicide or misadventure from under-treated pain and depression, rather than from medical exposure to opioids.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpainreport.com ...
“I can’t remember why he [Limbaugh] started taking them ...”
It was because he had a painful condition in his upper spine. It was so near his vocal chords that he refused to risk surgery.
Maybe he still has the condition and is still taking pain killers. Does anyone know about that?
I'm not...did that regimen for 3 years. Took medication AS PRESCRIBED and never abused it. That was in Utah. Moved back to Colorado and could not get script again. Now I just tough it out.
I am not an addict. Wish I still had the script, but I'm not an addict.
Some people do become addicts...I'm not one of them.
FMCDH(BITS)
I have also, because I was an asshole for too many years, emphysema.
The emphysema prevents me from doing the exercise(s) that would better strengthen my back (I DO think it could be treated holistically), but muscles take oxygen to work and I need what I get to breathe, so it's a catch 22 for me.
I think I'll live another five plus years because I take it easy, but my back hurts all the time.
I've used NSAIDS for the last ten years because my Dr won't proscribe heavier pharmacuticals and I am now on naproxin (not w/sodium) which SORT'A works, but not completely and not for long.
I'll listen to my Dr because I AIN'T one, but I remember my 1960's drug daze and there were drugs that I REALLY liked that produced "comfortably numb", which at 71 years ... why NOT be comfotably numb. ?
Just sayin'
Oxycontin did not cause his hearing loss. You are conflating two issues.
FReegards!
I’ll tell you what, how about (and understand I am being silly
with this comment), I come and visit you with a baseball bat. Break your spine at the base of your neck so that your spinal cord retains the shape of a triangle, then repeat the process at your lumbar spine. I will then gladly dictate for posterity, your personal expertise on opiod addiction. Please don’t forget to include your years of experience in the Health Care industry.
It was spinal surgery in the 1990s.
Well, I’m sure an article from the “National Pain Report” has their own biases.
Their main argument seems to be that the amount of ODs strictly tied to prescribed drugs is small. However, I notice they ignore addressing how many of the people who eventually OD initially became addicted to opiates through prescription drugs.
Most everyone I have known who became addicted to the stuff did not start out buying heroin on the street.
Limbaugh's cochlear implant doctor, Dr. Jennifer Derebery, an otolaryngologist at the House Ear Clinic in Los Angeles, says it is possible that there is a connection between Limbaugh's sudden hearing loss and pill abuse, but she said there is no way to know for sure.
"We don't know why some people, but apparently not most, who take large doses may lose their hearing," Derebery said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "The reason we don't know is that because we ultimately have to have biopsy specimens of the inner ear to tell that. but you can't biopsy the inner ear of a person who is alive because we are going to destroy the hearing," she said.
Did Drugs Cause Limbaugh's Hearing Loss?
So the truth is we do not know if the pills caused his hearing loss or not, but we do know that a percentage do suffer hearing loss with large intake amounts of prescription drugs. I am assuming that they have done biopsy research after patients have died to determine that it is know as a certainty that their hearing loss was indeed caused by prescription drug abuse. Didn't read the entire article to determine if my last statement is even true, just an assumption. But it seems to be an accepted hypothesis at any rate, as there were numerous articles about his hearing loss possibly being attributed to his prescription drug abuse. 8>)
Drug use to relieve pain is legitimate. Drug abuse is a CHOICE, and a bad one.
“...at 71 years ... why NOT be comfotably numb. ?”
Absolutely!
Well said. Walk (hobble) a mile in my shoes...
ADDICTION CHALLENGE
For an entire month, with a Doctor’s medical oversight, you can have me take ANY and ALL drugs, at a safe level.
Give me heroine, opiates, cocaine, pot, beer, wine, even cigarettes. After one entire month, I can guarentee you one outcome.
After one month on any drug, I WILL SIMPLY WALK AWAY. I will never use those drugs again. Never.
If I can walk away from any drug,
why can’t you too.
You can. :-)
“which at 71 years ... why NOT be comfotably numb. ?”
Don’t take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you’re nearly terminal.
And I see no reason to restrict your access to any drug you want.
An “addict” is simply somebody who has developed a physical dependence on a substance, and would experience withdraw symptoms if they don’t get it.
They have become addicted.
Nothing more, nothing less.
I understand. My point is not everyone who uses pain killers will become an addict.
Have you ever experienced long term pain?
I have and still do. My point is not everybody who goes through long term pain and takes opioids for relief is an addict.
Can you understand that?
FMCDH(BITS)
“Can you understand that?”
I know, as does science, that anyone who takes 10mg/day or more of any opioid for more than a couple of months, often less, is addicted.
Whether that makes them an addict is up to you.
What I see in that slide deck is a lack of references (talking about a source is not the same as actually providing the reference so that the reader can check the source directly). I also see the wrong kind of statistical analysis being used for the graph type. The graphs in the figure are all scatter plots; the correct correlation to use is the R-value, not the R-squared value. And the authors are making the claim that opioid overdose deaths are unrelated to opioid prescribing, but completely fail to mention that opioid addicts turn to street drugs as the addiction develops. Yet this is a crucial component of the current opioid crisis. People are dying of street drugs that they are taking because they are more potent and cheaper than prescription drugs, but many of them originally became addicted because of the prescriptions.
And I can rarely get one now for 5 mg for post surgery or post removal of 11 teeth. I took 5 mg twice a day of Oxycontin for Intractable Pain for 5 yrs, If I missed a dose all I felt was pain increase. Never a craving for them. But when pain spikes into Hypertension it could KILL me, I’m a Cardio patient who can’t take hypertension drugs, to many GI side effects I already have 5 of those don’t need a bleeding ulcer to boot. I see 4 Specialist.
I just had surgery on Tuesday, and was given 30 pills. I took maybe 5 or 6 of them before I reached the point of feeling that I had taken enough. That was 2 days ago. Today, I told the surgery nurse that I still feel a little queasy and dizzy as if I was still taking the pills. She said that people clear them from their systems at different rates, and that I should feel that they have cleared soon. I took ibuprofen this morning. For me, opioids have never been very good for pain, and the side effects quickly become worse than the pain. I do not see that I have much of a risk of becoming addicted.
I am afraid of developing a chronic pain condition in which the only relief would be narcotic drugs. Because I would then have to just tolerate the pain because narcotics don’t work very well for me. So far, I have used physical therapy for pain, and that works well.
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