My kid recently had part of his intestines removed. They gave him some sort of pain block during surgery and he needed nothing afterwards. I don’t think he even took any Motrin.
That said, I’ve used Oxycodone when I had kidney stones. It was great stuff that instantly overwhelmed the pain. I couldn’t imagine taking it just for kicks though.
My county is one of the epicenters on the east coast for opiods. We all know people who have died from overdoses. It’s sad. Doing nothing isn’t an option.
Our Sheriff has taken the approach of treating OD’s as victims. If they survive, they get helped, but they also get questioned very heavily about where they got it. The Sheriff then goes after the dealers...hard.
Is it working? I don’t know, but it’s a good alternative to the old way.
I also had a right hemicolectomy, and I guarantee for the first three postop days dilaudid was my friend, but I switched to Advil at the end of day three, and although the pain level increased it was tolerable. I was more worried about the constipation effects if I stayed on dilaudid than I was about the pain.
Not saying it's the right thing to do, but China had a severe addiction problem prior to the communist takeover. They solved it by the brutal expedient of executing every addict they could catch. I'm not advocating this solution here, but it's illustrative of the fact that drugs don't cause addiction, because after the addicts were dispatched the drugs remained, but China no longer had an addiction problem. The problem was the addicts not the drugs. Likewise the problem here is the people abusing the drugs, not the drugs themselves.