Posted on 03/20/2018 12:47:38 PM PDT by calvincaspian
The opioid crisis is a sinister scourge, racking up casualties across every demographic. The harrowing stories of families who’ve watched their children deteriorate and die are far too common.
Opioids took the lives of more than 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “On average, 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.” A full decade of losses at that level would exceed the number of American soldiers killed in World War II.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
OMG! You actually want to take personal responsibility for your actions? How will we control you if you keep demanging to be a free man?
I wonder how many of these addicts didn’t know what they were taking when they started?
Opiods can and do reduce pain. They are also addictive. They can and do lead people down that dark path.
I see way to many people get on opiods for minor issues, and not get off them. Heck, I had to argue to NOT get one a year ago.
Pain pills are not solving the problem. My father had double knee replacement, and then took himself off of Oxy because he was scared of how it was making him numb. Opiods don’t just numb the pain, it makes it worse when the drug wears off. Once he went on a different regiment, he was off the pain pills totally in a few weeks.
I am the opioid crisis. I suffer chronic pain and am on Fentanyl and Norco. I am monitored by my doctor, the Feds set limits on how much he can prescribe, the pharmacy will not refill prescriptions a day before my previous meds run out. Additionally, my insurance company will unilaterally deny coverage of meds they think are over-prescribed or consider too expensive.
So what additional controls will help reign in this scourge?
This is kind of a dumb question.
In the 1960s opiates were easier to get than today and many young people died from heroin. I think it was considered cool, from all I’ve read about that era. A lot of music stars were addicted and many died. They began a huge anti heroin advertising and educational campaign. By the time I came of age, in a wealthy high school in Los Angeles, you could get any drug in the hallways EXCEPT heroin. In the 80s, all the drugs except heroin were thought to be “cool,” even crystal meth, but heroin was seen as a very low class, dangerous drug that no one wanted.
How did the country achieve the heroin hatred of the 1980s? I’m sure that decade probably had much less heroin addictions and deaths than now. Was it straight up supply and demand (since even the CIA was pushing cocaine that decade)? Was there anything to the campaign post 1960s to denigrate heroin?
Absolutely. No argument here. They are a dangerous, but sometimes effective weapon in the fight against pain.
I see way to many people get on opiods for minor issues, and not get off them. Heck, I had to argue to NOT get one a year ago.
Patients need to judge for themselves whether their level of pain is worth utilizing this dangerous tool. Again, it's personal responsibility.
Pain pills are not solving the problem. My father had double knee replacement, and then took himself off of Oxy because he was scared of how it was making him numb. Opiods don’t just numb the pain, it makes it worse when the drug wears off. Once he went on a different regiment, he was off the pain pills totally in a few weeks.
I'm not a medical doctor, but in my experience, everyone's reaction to opioids is different. For me personally, they make me ill most times that I take them, so I really don't unless I have to. My need for opioids has fortunately been limited to a few surgeries, and, when I needed them, I was glad to have them. Again, I knew the risk and weighed it against the potential benefit. They helped my intense, time-limited pain enormously. I can't imagine having intense, chronic pain and not having access to these drugs.
I moved irrevocably into the "F*'em" camp when they neutered my OTC sinus pills to keep people from making meth out of them.
Good people shouldn't have to suffer unnecessarily because YOU happen to love a self-destructive loser.
I feel for you. I had a friend with ankylosing spinulitis (spelling?) and life wasn’t worth living without his pain meds. I’ve had 2 brain surgeries and also some major stomach slicing (feeling the knife in a c section is like seppukku) and I couldn’t have made it without morphine. But I know how to stop. Not everyone understands when to stop taking so that you don’t get addicted.
And people like you with chronic conditions may need to just be on it, addiction be damned, because it spares you agony. My friend with terminal liver cancer just injected her opiate when needed even at the restaurant table. Her doc was not worried about addiction, nor should she have been.
They had a special assembly in high school (very unusual) and they showed us a black and white film about heroin addiction (which we knew nothing about). The withdrawal scene had a once pretty woman screaming and scratching her arms begging for a fix. Nothing that ugly was ever on TV or even in the movies.
We were stunned
Pain IS the problem. When you have something to offer besides second-hand hearsay, your opinion might have some value.
Sure they do; they just CHOOSE not to....
The next year the Hippie movement arrived and all hell broke loose.
I can't speak to heroin withdrawal, but opioid withdrawal was nothing like that for me. Quitting cigarettes was tougher.
I ran out after my surgery because I had plenty left over from before surgery, so I told the surgeon i was good on pain pills. Post-op pain was gone by the time I ran out and I had been reducing the dosage (too quickly as it turned out) on my own so I didn't worry about getting any more. Then I couldn't sleep more than a half hour a night for three days and I figured out I was dependent. Went to my surgeon, told him what was going on, and he prescribed enough for me to taper off without the side effects. Two weeks later I was pain AND drug free.
Easy Peasy.
>> The great opioid hysteria <<
Amen. Because people with severe pain management issues are increasingly denied their legitimate medications, more and more are turning to street drugs like heroin and fentanyl. And due to the impurities and extreme strength of many street drugs, the death toll from “opioids” skyrockets.
So what is the proposed solution bruited by Demo and Pubbie alike? Have the gov’t restrict legitmate painkiller prescriptions EVEN MORE.
Anybody wanna guess what the outcome will be?
>> I wonder how many of these addicts didn’t know what they were taking when they started? <<
According to the recent well-publicized study out of Northeastern University, it looks as if only about two percent of the people who take opioids for legitimate pain issues go on to become addicts after their pain has gone away.
You can't conclude from one data point (China) what is the "natural progression" - and the available evidence from the USA when opiates were legal indicates the opposite.
Some here need to realize that we have folks with lumbar spines so bad who have had TLIF’s and ALIF’s and still have pain so bad only morphine will enable them to live without being in a nursing home. Tell me about the addicts on morphine? No one wants it for any buzz.
Tell me about it! Pain will eat up every bit of that.
Before I got my hips replaced I was working on 20 mg of opioids every four hours with my doctor's blessing. I was straight as an arrow the whole time.
I never felt the first "buzz" until after I was down to taking 5 mg a day, post op.
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