Our neighbor’s daughter was recently widowed.
Her husband was a county fire captain, that was injured, got strung out on pain meds, lost his job, his wife, and jumped off a bridge on the 5 freeway in Mission Viejo to his death.
He was NOT a guy with tats on his hands and his neck.
I blame the medical community a lot, since it could have happened to me four years ago.
My doctor and PA didn’t say one thing to me, about getting off pain meds quickly after a major surgery.
Fortunately I decided on my own (with my fading mental capacity) to kick the damn drugs if I could.
In the mid to late eighties I had pain on the bottom of my foot, it felt like a bone spur. To make the story short, I went to the emergency room at Fort Campbell and the stupid doctor gave me a bottle of Valium (I think he did that to get rid of me) I thought to myself there is noway that I will take them. So when I got home I flushed them down the toilet. At that time I did not know you're not supposed to do that.
Just had laproscopic/robot-assisted surgery for prostate cancer Aug 17th. Sent me home late Aug 18th with a full bottle of oxy. First day home I took 1, then another 12 hours later. I was so scared of being constipated and having that problem exacerbated by the oxy, that I went to straight up 1000mg acetaminophen every 12 hours to manage the pain after that. Worked through it and flushed the oxy, because I don’t even want that crap in my house.