Yeah, like being in EXCRUCIATING PAIN without it. If anything doctors are too reluctant to prescribe pain meds. If the DEA doesn't come after them and ban them from medicine for life, then the patents are likely to sue them for getting them addicted. It's much harder to sue for not prescibing enough drugs and letting the paitient live in agony.
Doctors say the biology and treatment of addiction are similar in many ways for both legal and illegal drugs; from tobacco, alcohol and prescription painkillers to cocaine and heroin.
This may be true but what's their point (they headlined with Rush Limbaugh's name so I consider it relevant to discuss his case). Rush has told his listeners time and time again that he was addicted to cigarettes (his "formerly nicotine stained fingers"). He still smokes cigars. Maybe this is seen as more hypocrisy by some. I don't know the frequency with which he smokes cigars (which aren't inhaled) versus the frequency with which he smoked cigarettes. He certainly did make reference to it at times when people discussed being "victimized" by "Big Tobacco". Rush has certainly confronted "addictions" before. He also said that when he lost weight, he realized that he had to eliminate all "adult beverages" (sugars and carbohydrates). Addiction is not just about "willpower" but as this article later states, Rush was still taking the medications to fight continued pain. Rush has also said that he has twice before gone into rehab to stop taking these medications. We have not been told his symptoms of withdrawl, if any (why substitute pain killers aren't used).
Addiction sets in when users become dependent on the intense feelings evoked as the drug works on primitive pleasure points within the brain."In our field, a drug is a drug is a drug," said Bill Carrick, program manager at the CAB Boston Treatment Center. Evans, the construction worker, was undergoing detoxification there.
Initial treatment often entails detox, sometimes with a substitute drug such as methadone. Long-term therapy may aim to substitute healthy rewards in family or work life for drug-induced euphoria.
Some abusers of painkillers are no longer in pain and take the drug purely for pleasure.
Others, as Limbaugh said of himself, are also getting relief from pain.
This line of reasoning is that addicts take it because of mental, not physical addiction. There can be physical withdrawl symptoms too (not just cold sweats; I believe that I had muscle spasms after I stopped taking some muscle relaxers for back pain, I tried not to take them long because they made me sluggish and when I didn't take them I had painful/violent spasms in my leg muscles; I toughed it out for a few days to stop taking them).
Evans, for example, started taking painkillers when he had his wisdom teeth pulled.
I had all 4 wisdom teeth impacted and extracted the same day. I was given a valium IV (administered at a hospital because I wanted an anesthesiaologist on hand incase I had a reaction; it would take much more time for an emergency vehicle to get to a dentist office). After the procedure (which I was conscious through, it took about an hour) I was given some pain killers and antibiotics. I can assure you that this man's pain was long over before he started taking heroin (and I doubt that he even took Oxycontin for his wisdom teeth removal). Apples to oranges comparing this man's story to Rush Limbaugh's.
Scare-Mongering Over 'Hillybilly Heroin' Deprives the Rest of Us