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Some doctors are a lot more concerned about turning their patients into drug addicts than they are about the government. I know my dad's that way. He just does not want to give his patients narcotics unless they are dying. He'll tell people to learn to live with their pain. He'll rarely prescribe something that is addictive, because he believes that in most cases his patients’ quality of life will be much lower if they become drug addicts than it would have been if they had to live with some pain. He may take it too far, but I have to say I agree with him on that to a great extent. We still have a lot of doctors who are basically licensed drug dealers. I used to work as a public defender and it got to the point that I knew all the local doctors people went to to get their narcotics. These people knew which doctors would write them scripts for anything they wanted. The word would be out on these guys and my drug addict clients would all be going to the same ones. You wouldn't believe how many people are getting drugs this way and selling them on the streets for several times what they paid for them, often with the government covering most of what they paid to begin with. Some of the saddest cases I would see were cases where people with legitimate health issues would become addicted to pain meds they were prescribed and it would get to the point that they were forging prescriptions, stealing drugs and that sort of thing. These addictions can be incredibly powerful. Good people can become so desperate that they'll do bad things to get their fix, and so many of them just can't quit, even after they get in trouble, get sent to rehab or even prison. I don't want the government keep people from getting the pain meds they need, but there is another side to that coin.

Your dad is a rare bird, God bless him. Today's medical culture, highly influenced by the pharmaceutical companies, have been taught that nobody should be in pain for any reason, ever. They dole out pain pills like crazy. They totally addicted my wife after her back surgery. She quit one day, cold turkey, and it was terrible. I've never seen anyone so sick. My son just had 4 wisdom teeth pulled. The oral surgeon prescribed him (he just turned 18) a bottle of 25 Perkasets. Unbelievable. He didn't need any of them, he made it fine on advill.