I don’t see people who are in unbearable everyday pain as addicts.
They are simply trying to treat their pain.
I had a very painful surgery and was taking vicodin for about a solid month.
When the pain was gone I was able to stop taking it easily.
What burns me up about the opiate debate is how people in chronic pain are called drug seekers due to the few who abuse their meds.
We have to jump through hoops to buy certain decongestants just because a few fools cook meth. I believe some products have been banned totally because of that.
The government is too involved in our everyday choices.
If a few people make bad choices why should everyone else be punished for it?
One guy goes on a shooting rampage so people think guns should be banned. I don’t believe anyone here would agree with that. Is it the gun manufacturer’s fault or is the gun shop to blame? Is the government to blame because they won’t ban guns?
No. One guy chose to go on a shooting rampage.
Freedom has strings attached.
We have to choose wisely.
I don’t want the government restricting our freedom because of stupid people.
But they DO wind up chemically addicted to heroin based painkillers.
Depending on your genetics it generally takes between 6 months and a year of daily use to get addicted. Now the mental addiction to the happy pill is another matter. But to actually rewrite your bio chemistry so that it needs this other substance takes a while. Of course for folks in chronic pain 6 months goes by pretty quick.
You’re onto half of it. Yes people shouldn’t be punished en mas for the actions of a few. But part of that problem is that the few is so often the doctors. Most of the hoops you have to go through to get your pain meds are to fix the Florida problem, Florida had some very lax regulations and became the “pain clinic” capital of America handing out oxy scripts left and right (remember when Rush moved to FLA, ding ding ding). So to fix that the feds added a lot of regulations about doctor shopping and all kinds of other stuff. And remember, this is an inevitable part of the cycle, assuming the person in chronic pain doesn’t manage to die first eventually they WILL develop a tolerance to the point where they can no longer legally get scrip for that big a dose. That’s not abusing the meds, that’s HOW the meds work. The doctors know that day is inevitable for every chronic pain oxy scrip the write, and they do it anyway.
We do have to chose wisely. Unfortunately our doctors are NOT. As is anybody that objects to medical marijuana. They’re making very bad decisions, but since they don’t have to pay the consequences they don’t worry about it. They just take all that free stuff from the drug reps and keep on writing scrips that they know will do more harm than good.
“I don’t see people who are in unbearable everyday pain as addicts.
They are simply trying to treat their pain.
I had a very painful surgery and was taking vicodin for about a solid month.
When the pain was gone I was able to stop taking it easily.
What burns me up about the opiate debate is how people in chronic pain are called drug seekers due to the few who abuse their meds.”
I had a major surgery, as well. And I was prescribed powerful opiate pain meds.
Like my doctor very much, but I feel the medical profession as a whole, is far too lenient in getting people off those same meds.
The meds are needed for just a few days, but they will leave people on them almost indefinitely.
I told my physician I wanted off, cold turkey. They advised to have a reduced strength prescription in case I needed to come off, gradually.
I preferred to risk cold turkey, did it okay.
But that was me, not the physician/physician’s assistant.