This is strictly a crock. 100 million people suffering from chronic pain that require opioids to survive. Bunk. It is not possible and it is not even reasonable to consider treating long term pain with an addictive narcotic. If you do you will have just what we have, a nation of junkies. These drugs are for short term intense pain such as post surgical or accident while healing can take place.
Most people around here have not got a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of but we have TWO thriving “Pain” clinics here. Obamacare created this mess by providing unlimited medical care access to the poor. The drugs they get from unscrupulous doctors provide an income stream and the doctors make money. Pain clinics, pfft, nothing but a dishonest money making racket.
The doc on this thread is correct, four pain pills per day makes a person unworkable because you can’t work a junkie.
I know something about pain that stays with you. Lifting way too much when I was a kid, rodeoing, broken bones, repetitive stress injury from too many years at a keyboard have all taken their toll and yet I go on with only aspirin and maybe ibuprofen but it takes awhile to straighten up and get moving.
I went for my physical last week. Every time the doc asks if I have pain and I reply, “Of course.” Then he asks if I want something for it and I say no but he persists a pill will make it all better as if he is pushing drugs. We need to take fewer drugs not more. The chemical cocktail the some take was never considered in the drug interaction trials.
I don’t respect the medical industry but there are some respectful people in it. It is self-serving with built in conflicts of interest. This became automatic when it moved to a for profit status across the board. To get respect you need to behave respectfully. A respectful industry would self-police and shut down the pain clinics and not push drugs every night on national TV ads. It is not the military industrial complex we should fear, it is the medical industrial complex that is bent on shaking every last cent from our pockets before we die and stealing the nickels out of our eyes after we are dead. It is an industry that justifies its actions by holding us hostage because it and life are indispensable and infinitely valuable. Thing is, so are the services many others provide.
If only sick people used the medical services and only necessary and effective procedures were done it would be a much more effective but less lucrative business. Back surgery is the hysterectomy of the day and I’m sure there are other rackets just like it. An operation that costs $85,000 or more with a 35% questionable success rate. Only a charlatan would hold that out except to the most dire circumstances.
Opioids are at the heart of a racket to make money and it has gone out of control. Life has never been pain free but it has been drug free for most in times past and still we survived.