Posted on 09/27/2016 4:28:52 AM PDT by Wolfie
Of that there is no argument whatsoever.
I had a friend that broke his leg severely in a sledding accident. He was in the hospital for 6 months. They had to insert a metal pin in his leg that had to be at least 12 inches long. When he got out he had to spend another 6 months in a cast. When he finally got out of his cast his right leg looked like he was a Biafra famine survivor while his left leg looked normal. During his 6 month stay in the hospital they gave him morphine whenever he requested it. He later became a heroin addict. But that was well beyond the 6 month period. At least as far as I know. He may have gotten on the heroin kick and I just never knew it until years later when we visited in California. This sledding accident had happened while we were in high school and we were best friends that lived in the same neighborhood. So had he gone to heroin I would have thought I would have found out. My point is that like any addiction it is a lifelong struggle to remain straight. Those who do remain straight, do so because their desire to remain straight overrides their desire to return to a life of addiction.
The other problem is that it usually only takes one fall off of the wagon to be right back to the addiction, and then the whole process to kick it has to be repeated all over again. Because that brain chemistry quickly remembers the pleasures and ignores the negatives.
I'm not trying to discourage, but rather inform that the struggle will be an extremely long one. Hopefully your daughter will continue on with great success. I have personally known several who have successfully overcome it, but the temptations lasted for years. All it takes is for one to give up on themselves. The fact that she has two years under her belt is definitely a very positive sign.
This is why I could never agree with those that say it should be legalized. They really have no idea what they are advocating. While it may sound like the right thing to do, in the long run they will realize that it will negatively impact them sooner rather than later. It has already grown to such proportions that dealing with the increasing problem is almost beyond a remedy.
As for the mother she apparently was too weak to fight for life. Always a shame, especially when it was brought on from an event such as an accident, rather than a conscious choice. Unfortunately the struggles remain the same regardless.
Yes, prayers are how all should approach addiction problems, and I contend they help. Because without hope the struggle is amplified even more.
Morphine eases dying no question
The family controls the pump
I may have a beer with a pizza. Or an occasional glass of white wine. Less than 12 drinks a year. But both run blood sugar up so I don’t mess with it much.
Tell me, bro spent 17 days in the hospital. When they released them my sis whose backyard he lives in, in a RV so uses her address, had him brought to her house, took 2 large men to haul him up a set of steep stairs, they live on the side of a mountain in Pigeon Forge area and dumped on her love seat, she had to go to the hospital and pick up the porta potty. He lives like a pig smell and all. Scares her grands. She finally got him back in his RV after months. Chaps my hide we have to pay disability for him which he uses to buy more booze. At 50+ no one can control what he does.
That truly is a shame. Also sad that one succumbs so totally. I gave up drinking probably 20 years ago, but it was really not an issue with me because I just didn’t like some of my behaviors when on alcohol, nor did I enjoy the hangovers. But I was never one who drank every day. Instead I was the kind of drinker that once I started I drank until I was blotto.
I think yours are old arguments.
Right now, the number of opiate abusers in the US has quadrupled in five years. If addicts can no longer get the pharmaceuticals they want, heroin is a quarter of the price of black market opiates.
And because heroin is expensive, it is cut with the dirt cheap Fentanyl (100 times stronger than morphine) as well as its equally potent chemical analogs. Fentanyl and its analogs have already killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of Americans, and shows signs of killing many more.
So yeah, opiates are good, when you have to have them. But if at all possible they should be avoided, or you should get off them ASAP. Because if you get addicted, your life can turn to crap.
Heroin is inexpensive in Nashville and it’s incredibly potent due to our huge beanpop
20 bucks will get two regular people throwing up high so I’m told
Giving people pain relief by the way is not an argument that ages
I’ve taken 10mg oxycodone thus far today and I’m going about my business just fine with a chronic pain level around 2-4 versus 7-10 depending
I’m almost 60 and survived a life of gunshots and motorcycle wrecks and open heart surgeries and a pacemaker and thyroid disease and am responsible for the welfare of 9 family members plus my employees whom I do feel a responsibility for
Nine dependents !
Try that on for size
I frankly do not know anyone else who does all I do through feast and famine which is the bane of self employment
And if moderate opioid use and steroid use too for pain mgt helps folks like me function with chronic pain in my October years then that’s my business not the govt or church ladies
I think I can figure out for myself I’ve earned that right of responsibility many times over not to have it usurped by the high and mighty busybodies
Drug warriors can simply mind their own business
They’ve already ruined my allergies addled asthmatic 16 year old sons ability to get pseudo ephedrine which frankly is the absolute only relief for a constant flowing snot nose
But nooooooooo
Because a few dumbass hillbillies make meth from crushed pills let’s make it hard for those who really need them to get them
One a day
That’s the limit 30 mg one a day
My wife and I and friends have to run the gauntlet to get them for him
It’s ridiculous
I wish they made Drug Warriors have to ration their booze purchases
That would be the shoe on the other foot nanny state wise
I don’t agree that cholesterol meds are a scam. Your own liver synthesizes about 70% of what is in your blood and the meds serve to block this pathway. I don’t take any meds but I understand some people must.
I am sorry for the loss of your father. That was a hard road to travel.
“Those who can, must.”
(In some families at least.)
Beautifully said... especially your last thought....
The interesting thing was that in 1917, when Congress thought regulating booze was a good idea, they recognized that they had no such power (i.e., it was not one of the "Legislative powers herein granted"), and that therefore a Constitutional amendment would be required before they could pass the Volstead Act.
By 1971, when most Federal drug laws were passed, Congress had no such inhibitions, and believed they could legislate about anything that pleased them.
That does not mean they are bad or even wrong-headed arguments.
The issue is a two-sided one. Users for medicinal purposes vs. recreational users.
The issue is a balancing act of how to protect the true medicinal users from being treated like criminal recreational users. Much like protecting law abiding legal gun owners while dealing with legal & illegal gun owners who commit crimes.
Some say that eliminating the possibility of a legal law abiding gun owner from becoming a criminal gun owner is to make gun ownership illegal.
The same argument is used with powerful drugs.
Eliminate potent narcotics from the marketplace, as the solution to combat the possibility of recreational usage of these narcotics.
This of course requires those who need them to lead a life that allows them the opportunity to remain a productive member of society with a pain level that is bearable, to be denied that opportunity. Thus they are treated just like the illegal recreational users and denied a product that they use legally and responsibly, because some do not.
And I never went beyond the 1 drink, after the first time I spent time over the toilet. I have never liked to be out of control. The control freak in me I guess. Or the to rational/logical one nor was I a ‘party’ person not my bag then or now. I’ve seen what MMJ and booze did to my siblings not a pretty picture. The only 1 who didn’t out grow the booze was the pampered ‘baby’. The rest gave up booze and MMJ when they found Christ later in life. I found Him at 14 and never looked back, I knew where I wanted to be come judgement day. I’d not have survived the many curve balls life has thrown if not for that strong belief in God and Christ.
In the case of opioid use health needs should have been factored in as many people have chronic level 9 pain, and no cure for their illness or injuries. Just getting the pain down to a level 4 where they can function is all they are asking so they have some semi normal life. What is next gov’t going to take it away from End stage cancer patients? They rarely exceed what is needed for control. Nor do we need Pain Management it’s just another layer of a UN-needed ill trained doctor, with book learning not actual experience with it.
You’ll have to clue me into what MMJ is. I have no clue.
Complete agreement with this.
However, I’d like to add that narcotics are a parallel problem to antibiotics. In both cases, used appropriately, they are godsends. Overused or misused, they turn into lethal nightmares.
From my own perspective, my doctor had a “Dr. Drugs” move into a suite next to his. A constant stream of middle class and upper middle class addicts flooded to his office for a month before he and his staff were arrested by the DEA.
He was not alone:
https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/crim_admin_actions/doctors_criminal_cases.pdf
Right now, drug treatment for narcotics addiction is overwhelmed by the number of new addicts seeking help. And while, unlike generations ago when addicts were poor derelicts, today many are well to do.
But even they cannot afford black market pharmaceuticals, so they move to heroin. While they think they will just smoke or snort it, within a couple of weeks they are injecting.
And this is where Fentanyl and its analogs come in, as well as W-18. Someone let slip that W-18 would be a superb poison to murder someone with, because there is no test for it. And both are so much cheaper than heroin, drug makers can’t resist.
The same with antibiotics. Their misuse is now causing some 2m annual infections in the US, with 23,000 deaths.
Pharmaceutical Opioid Analgesics overdose deaths in the US per year 18,893. Heroin overdoses 10,574. Both numbers are growing a lot.
It really is a shame that drugs have become so rampant. Big money everywhere and customers willing to sacrifice everything makes it inevitable that it will just keep expanding.
The over and improper use of antibiotics results in antibiotic resistant bacteria. Typically, many of these resistant bacteria are already in us, and antibiotics kill off so many good bacteria that it allows the resistant pathogens to have a “bloom”, which can kill. CDC estimates are that now 2m Americans every year are getting DR infections, killing some 23,000. Disfiguring and crippling many more.
The most common of the DR bacteria:
Acinetobacter
Campylobacter
Clostridium difficile (C. diff)
Escherichia coli (E. coli)
Gonorrhea
Group B streptococcus
Klebsiella pneumoniae
MRSA
MRSA Strain USA300-FPR3757
Neisseria meningitidis
Salmonella, non-typhoidal serotypes
Shigella
Streptococcus pneumoniae
Typhoid Fever
Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE)
Vancomycin-Intermediate/Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VISA/VRSA)
Vibrio vulnificus
Tuberculosis (DR/MDR/XDR/CDR)
Many types of bacteria can cause necrotizing fasciitis (”flesh eating infections”), for example, Group A streptococcus (Streptococcus pyogenes), Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium perfringens, Bacteroides fragilis, Aeromonas hydrophila, and Vibrio vulnificus.
Though in many cases, such as outbreaks in hospitals, the best solution is to put strict controls on the use of antibiotics.
Thus when someone who does not engage in over usage of antibiotics the strain is resistant enough to not be killed and it becomes even more resistant to antibiotics.
Is that correct?
The details are ridiculously complex. Scientists have only begun recently mapping the human biome. So a good introduction starts with what we do know, in smaller bites.
The overwhelming majority of microorganisms in our bodies are viruses. We don’t have a clue as to how many different kinds, but we do know that about half of them are bacteriophage, bacteria eating, that help keep our bacteria under control. We also know that some are interactive with our immune system and metabolism.
The human intestinal flora (biome) has from 300-1000 different kinds of bacteria. But just 30-40 kinds take up almost all of the physical space. In doing so, they “shoulder out” other bacteria, good and bad. They have no room to increase, so their levels stay about the same.
The 30-40 kinds are divided into the evolutionarily newer, aerobic bacteria that live in our upper digestive tract (mostly phylum firmicutes), and the older bacteria that live in our lower intestines and colon (mostly phylum bacteroidetes). The newer bacteria are very good at digesting the food we eat, which releases nutrients that we can absorb. The older bacteria, less so.
Most fermented food products are made with firmicutes, or the non-bacteria yeasts. There is only one predominant yeast in our bodies, and it mostly digests sugars. Too much of it and you get a yeast infection, just about anywhere in the body.
There are lots of other microorganisms in there as well, including protozoa, fungi, parasites, and one real oddity, called an Archaea. Archaea look like bacteria, but are so different they are an entirely different *domain* of life. They are more closely related to plants and animals than they are to bacteria. They also do not eat what bacteria eat. The type that lives in humans eats hydrogen gas, for example.
Hydrogen gas is produced by bacteria when they digest the food they eat, and it limits bacterial growth. So when the Archaea eats the hydrogen, it means the bacteria can more thoroughly digest our food, giving us more nutrition.
At this point enters antibiotics: the nuclear weapons of the biome. They wipe out vast numbers of bacteria, bad and good. But those bacteria that survive quickly become more resistant to it. Since most reproduce about every half an hour, resistance in subsequent generations happens rapidly.
This is why they always say to take *all* the antibiotics you have been prescribed. If you don’t wipe out the pathogen, it will recover and be far more resistant.
And resistance means that the next time an antibiotic is used, the healthy bacteria are cleared from much of the space, and the resistant bacteria can have a “bloom”. And this can be deadly.
Lumped under the category of “sepsis”, the CDC has declared sepsis a medical emergency that kills 258,000 people a year nationally. These are newer stats than those I used earlier. A ten-fold jump. Sepsis now kills more Americans than do heart attacks.
Leaving on a high note, consuming live culture firmicutes is a great way to protect yourself from resistant bacteria. One of the better ways is a drink, that tastes like a yogurt smoothy, but has 10-12 different digestive bacteria cultures in it is called “Kefir”, and is now available in many grocery stores.
Many doctors are already advising their patients taking antibiotics to drink kefir in between doses, to help restore the intestinal flora and prevent DR infections by not giving them the space to have a bloom.
Just out of curiosity, is your profession the reason you are so knowledgeable on this subject, or just your individual research into it?
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