Posted on 03/15/2018 3:05:45 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
---SNIP--- Like other patients across the country, Craig is a victim of the recent crackdown on prescription opioids, which is based on a narrative that mistakenly blames pain treatment for a plague of addiction and death. Most Americans believe we are in the midst of an "opioid crisis" that began in the 1990s with the introduction of OxyContin. According to the generally accepted account, deceptive marketing encouraged reckless prescribing, which led to widespread addiction among patients and record numbers of opioid-related fatalities—a situation President Donald Trump has declared a public health emergency.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who chaired the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, invokes that narrative when he talks about "the injured student-athlete who becomes addicted after [his] first prescription" or remembers the law school classmate who died of an overdose after getting hooked on the oxycodone he was taking for back pain. Such examples are misleading because they are rare, accounting for only a small percentage of opioid-related deaths
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
I remember a story long ago where this woman was in pain and dying from cancer. Her husband told hospital staff not to give her pain meds because he didn’t want her dying as an addict.
My ex was a victim. Don’t give me that deal.
She was at a pain level of 8 while on them, and shitting the bed she was so stoned.
Mayo Clinic dried her out gave her some exercises and her pain went to a 3.
Watch.
A huge part of the problem is that doctors prescribe opioids instead of attempting treatment. Real treatment. People get addicted instead of healed.
The VA prescribed me some crap and I said no thanks! I found treatment and healing outside of the VA system. Still have my problems for sure, but I’m not an addicted drooling zombie.
I think a big part of this problem is not doctor’s overprescribing but cheap pain pills coming across our border from China.
In ww2 there was a school of thought that wounded soldiers shouldn’t get morphine because they might become addicted. They lost.
9 years ago I was hospitalized for 9 days with intractable unbearable pain from 7 broken ribs and a bruised lung. Had an epidural morphine pump .implanted in my spine. I could control the pump but it had a limiter so I wouldn’t get too much. Didn’t do that much for pain relief but did make me into a bigger prick than I normally am..or so I was told. Didn’t become an addict.
I am a pharmacist and know full well the problems with addiction. My father broke his back in a helicopter crash, he was the pilot. He was in great pain and was totally physically addicted to codeine that was used for pain control. Once the pain was no longer a problem he reduced and then quit the use of pain killers. He did not want to use codeine and when he no longer needed it quit using it.
Addiction is physiological, the need to continue this addiction is psychological.
When I was a liver doaner to my beloved brother I was on very high dose morphine for pain control. They split you open like a filleted fish. Post op pain is really bad. I needed the morphine for pain. I hated the way it made me feel mentally. As soon as the pain was under control I got off the morphine even though I still had some pain.
Addiction is physiologic but long term addiction is psychological.
The opiod crisis started when the first doctor was sued for not prescribing and the judgement went against the doc and hospital. Not a drug company conspiracy.
People who don’t suffer chronic, debilitating pain, pain that do not qualify for surgery or surgeries that either were useless or worse yet, left the patient with greater pain, fail to grasp that the proposed situation is leaving many law abiding citizens with slim choices.
For decades, pro-abortion adherents have told us decisions between doctors and their patients should be the only people who have a say so in matters involving women’s bodies yet some of those same people believe patients suffering chronic pain should be deprived of the only medication that gives them quality of life because some people who lie, cheat and steal take overdoses or others who have themselves taken meds when no longer needed, get hooked and thus believe the drugs should be outlawed.
This issue reminds me of mass shootings vs. 2nd Amendment argument that is apples and oranges.
Americans should never be confused by trying to equate gun confiscation of law abiding citizens vs criminals with guns being removed from society and painkilling drugs being provided to those who need them and penalizing those who both provide illegal prescriptions and those who pursue them for so-called “recreational use!”
At Letterman our orthopedic ward wing tested holistic bio-feedback which was surprisingly effective in controlling pain without drugs. We also had more aggressive rehab exercising that was independent of physical therapy.
Oh look! Another histrionic from the "let's legalize drugs Libertarians" at a magazine deceptively named "reason."
You say we should legalize drugs? Isn't this like the thousandth time you've said this?
No doubt payback for what Britain (et al) did to them.
“I think a big part of this problem is not doctor’s overprescribing but cheap pain pills coming across our border from China.”
Exactly. government, politicians, bureaucrats get the F out of between doctors and patients and focus on black market. F off.
They gave me a bunch, took one and flushed the rest down the toilet.
In 2008 I suffered a broken hip, more opiates refused them, hurt for a while but it got better.
I grew up in a city that was destroyed by drugs.
Guess what, there are only 3 states left that are in full compliance with Federal Marijuana laws.
There will be another 2 to 3 states going full recreational every year, can’t be stopped.
The pols love those new taxes and the people are voting it in.
A story from out of the vault. Many moons ago...like 1971.. my beloved ww2 vet uncle lay dying of terminal pancreatic cancer in a major Chicago hospital. I went to visit him. He was in excellent humor..smiling, laughing , chatting with me, smoking Lucky Strikes (yes,America used to be a free country). My recollection is he had a line in him with some sort of cobra venom extract as a pain killer. There is no way I can confirm that but it is my memory. Anyhow, we bid adieu and I went home. He died that night.
I don’tl know what my point is except that no one should interfere with pain relief for the suffering.0
Good article.
The. Woman. Was. Dying. Of. Cancer. Her. Husband. Had. Staff. Not. Give. Her. Morphine. Because. He. Didn’t. Want. Her. To Die. As. An. Addict. Dying. Of. Cancer. On. Her. Death. Bed.
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