I don't have the answers and I know a fair bit about medicine. My MIL was addicted to Vicodin at least a dozen years before she entered the nursing home at 89. Most of the occupants were walking pharmacopoeias with some taking a dozen drugs. The overmedication is a modern event. Nursing homes only came into existence in the last 60 years or so.
My MIL was addicted to Vicodin at least a dozen years before she entered the nursing home at 89. Most of the occupants were walking pharmacopoeias with some taking a dozen drugs. The overmedication is a modern event. Nursing homes only came into existence in the last 60 years or so. You are comparing apples to oranges.
You said “I just watched my Mother-in-law die under hospice care a couple of months ago” and now you are saying she was in a nursing home and was addicted to pain meds for a dozen years before even entering the nursing home. So which is it?
Let me be clear that I think that over medicating with opiates nursing home patients or the elderly in to make them compliant is downright evil. Giving a terminally ill and dying person opiates in the last days and hours of their life in order to ease their suffering is not wrong.