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.
There has to be a better way to manage pain.
I remember when I was young and unable to get pain pills.
I started drinking heavily so I could go to sleep at night.
I don’t do this anymore because I’m not having pain of that magnitude and if I do, I can take half a pill and a muscle relaxer and get some relief which is probably better than a gallon or two of Jack every week.
Personally, I’m afraid of marijuana but if it works I have nothing against it or the people who use it.