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American doctors are way too free and easy with opioids. I had minor surgery in the UK, and got released from the hospital with nothing more than a "good luck." I had minor surgery in the USA a few years later and got a bottle of Percocet that could have kept me high for a week. I didn't need it, didn't use it (took one pill and found I didn't like it.) I have a pain issue (not all that bad, generally just nagging) and I feel like I really have to fight off a Percocet prescription every time I see anyone about it. I feel like I'm getting the message "If you are hurting, take Percocet, or else you aren't taking enough steps to control your pain." I don't want to take the nasty stuff. It constipates me and makes me loopy, plus, it's addictive and my pain isn't going to clear up soon, so I don't want to get addicted.
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Jan 21, 2016 14:58
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Guavanaut posted:It was a "religion is the opiate of the masses" reference. Although it does raise some interesting questions about addiction and the collapse of traditional support networks in late capitalism. Catholicism has a lot of stories about saints who patiently endured endless pain, sometimes for many years.
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Jan 21, 2016 15:16
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There is a real lack of painkillers between "headache pills" and opioids. If medical science could create a painkiller as strong as percocet but non-addictive and not significantly dangerous long-term, a lot of people's lives would be improved.
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Jan 21, 2016 15:49
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My Imaginary GF posted:why not make an app to connect individuals with excess scripts and folk with scripts they cannot afford to fill? Congrats you've managed to disrupt "being a drug dealer." You could call it "dealr."
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Mar 8, 2016 14:04
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Once when I was about 20 I went to the doctor for some minor malady. The doctor gave me a stern glare and told me "I know what you are looking for young lady, and you won't get it from me!" I have always wondered if my random symptoms matched up with some typical drug-seeking behaviour. Or whether he was just crazy!
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Apr 4, 2016 18:24
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deathbysnusnu posted:You might have been profiled. Some health care people are really asses about tattoos. No tattoos, and I've got a generally meek and nerdy appearance.
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Apr 4, 2016 18:35
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If there was any treatment with a high chance of success, addiction wouldn't be a big problem, would it? Addicts seem to use the low chance of success/high religion quotient of existing treatment programs as an excuse to try nothing rather than try everything. Some kind of learned helplessness I suspect, probably from the same issues that pre-dispose them to become addicts.
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Apr 5, 2016 22:36
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jabby posted:To add the perspective of a UK doctor, over here we see far less prescription opioid abuse. Part of that is down to how we prescribe and part is down to our healthcare system. I'm a person from the UK who emigrated to the USA. I had to have several surgeries last year. Each time I left hospital with a prescription for Percocet which I didn't use. I had painful and serious complications to the first surgery which caused the subsequent surgeries. I feel that my symptoms were actually missed because of the opiate obsession of the US healthcare system. When I complained of excessive pain, the doctor would only say "Pain is normal; take the Percocet." In fact it was not normal - my pain was caused by an abscess that developed in the wound. If I hadn't developed the abscess I would never have needed the huge bottle of pills I was given; there was very little pain at first. It was clearly just a routine - after every surgery you got a prescription for a big bottle of Percocet. Seriously, I could have kept constantly high for 5 days if I'd taken the pills according to the direction on the bottle. Over the course of 5 surgeries last year I have no doubt I could have been prescribed enough Percocet to develop a serious habit. I got a prescription for a large bottle every time (tore it up) and I'm certain that I could have got refills if I asked. It is no mystery to me how people in the USA get addicted. If they don't get surgery themselves, no doubt every elderly person's medicine cabinet has some forgotten opiate pills from past surgery left for curious young people to experiment with. The UK system is much better. I suppose people are probably in unnecessary pain after surgery for a couple of days in the UK, but what's 2 days of pain compared to a lifetime of addiction? (Please note, I'm not talking about chronic pain here, I'm just talking about excessive prescription of opiates after minor surgery.)
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Apr 7, 2016 14:59
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Grundulum posted:This seems like a pretty concise analogy. I'll file it away for later use if I need it. But as Subvisual Haze points out, opiates become slowly less effective over time. Insulin does not.
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Apr 9, 2016 13:07
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Ytlaya posted:I'm prescribed a pretty high dose of Gabapentin, and I'm not sure how anyone could use it recreationally like that. It does have a noticeable potentially recreational effect the first couple times you take it (sorta like some strange mix between xanax and marijuana, but far weaker and only really affects your body), but it stops doing that after the first one or two doses and higher doses don't really have any additional effect past a point, so I don't see how it could be used regularly in that manner. I've taken Lyrica and Gabapentin, related drugs. Lyrica got me high as a kite. I can't say I'm experienced with drugs, but I've taken opioids (low dose) after surgery and they didn't really get me high. With Lyrica it was ridiculous. I remember thinking that if the drug addicts hear about this stuff they will throw away their syringes because I felt like I was the happiest person alive (but it also made my lips and throat swell up like crazy so not touching that stuff again.) Gabapentin made me want to do nothing but lie on the sofa for 2 hours, feeling like my brain didn't belong to my body. I can see how this would appeal to addicts, but it didn't appeal to me, it was horrible. You say that it doesn't do this after taking it a couple of times? I might try it again.
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Oct 19, 2016 19:48
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pangstrom posted:Putting straightforward suicide attempts aside, what proportion of users-mixing-opiates-with-depressants-who-OD knew they were playing with fire, do you guys think? Seems like it would be high. Feels semi-suicidal, at least the "gently caress it" sense. Drug/alcohol/suicide deaths seem to be generally referred to recently as "deaths of despair" because they are all so closely linked and sometimes hard to tell apart.
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Jan 4, 2017 16:30
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pangstrom posted:LIfe expectancy dipped a bit in 2015 in the US, which doesn't happen often outside of things like the AIDS epidemic. They're kind of agnostic about it in the article but since nothing killing young-ish people has increased I'm pretty confident that opiate-related ODs are driving it. Drugs, alcohol, suicide. They call them "deaths of despair." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/28/deaths-of-despair-us-jobs-drugs-alcohol-suicide And probably obesity too, which can often be caused by compulsive eating due to unhappiness, so it's not all that different to the above.
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Mar 30, 2017 16:15
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KingEup posted:Another good article: I used to think this. But when doctors chilled out slightly on prescribing opioids the numbers of addicts vastly increased. Legal access actually increased the number of addicts.
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Apr 1, 2017 23:49
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big cock Salaryman posted:are you referring to what happened in the US in the early 2000s with oxy, or something else? Since round about then until recently there has been a lot more prescription of opioids because of a shaky study that said people in pain don't get addicted. Turns out they do, and also if there's a lot of legal opiates floating around, there is more opportunity for them to get into the black market. There was also an issue with something called "pill mills" where crooked doctors made huge profits prescribing huge amounts of opioids to anyone who could pony up cash for a "consultation."
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Apr 2, 2017 23:50
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big cock Salaryman posted:yeah im aware of all that. part of it was the age-old tactic of claiming that oxy wasn't addictive. i agree that it was wrong to do. my view is that the toothpaste is out of the tube and we need to provide support, because no amount of crackdowns will put the paste back in. We also need to think about preventing future addicts as well as caring for current ones. Providing freely available opioids would help current addicts live a normal life, but would inevitably create new addicts.
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Apr 3, 2017 14:29
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Fried Watermelon posted:What a hellish life you must have if your reaction to people overdosing is to punish them and hope they die rather than trying to fix the underlying problems. It's not much of a step from that to Duterte's "shoot addicts in the head" philosophy.
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Jun 29, 2017 20:54
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As far as I know, people who professionally work with "difficult" people often get a cynical attitude and burn out.
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Jan 24, 2018 15:36
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the black husserl posted:Trump is a notorious teetotaler who treats drinkers and drug users with a very sincere contempt. I do not believe he uses any substances other than Diet Coke. He is a huge hypocrite in all sorts of ways so he might be a user of every substance APART from booze and still think of himself as teetotal. But isn’t it more alarming that his natural personality is that of a drunk person on a coke binge?
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Feb 8, 2018 14:27
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OXBALLS DOT COM posted:One look at his body would show that your diet pills theory is bullshit "Diet pills" are legal stimulants, not necessarily actually functional as diet aids.
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Feb 8, 2018 15:58
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pangstrom posted:Just to suggest a reframe: I would bet money that (while Freddy was alive) Donald thought he was a loser, and so did their dad. Isn't that exactly why he became teetotal?
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Feb 8, 2018 18:43
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Ytlaya posted:I'm pretty sure pretty much everyone who says that says it in a derisive way that is intended to imply moral failing. No one ever calls people with, say, cancer "losers" even if it destroys them financially or whatever. I bet Trump would.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:49
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I think the idea is that Fetanyl is cheaper than heroin, but so strong that it’s hard to measure out correctly, due to the tiny quantities involved. Drug mills aren’t exactly full of trained pharmacists. So sometimes they screw up and make something stronger than they intended. Drug dealers may be financially motivated to sell placebo pills, but they wouldn’t get much repeat business.
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Feb 21, 2018 15:04
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The problem with the USA legalizing opioids for prescription only is that prescription opioids could end up more expensive than the street stuff. As far as I know this has already happened, with people who became addicted to legal painkillers turning to street heroin and fentanyl because it's cheaper. The solution would work much better in countries with universal or affordable health care.
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Dec 8, 2018 18:44
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Most people who use drugs are partiers who otherwise lead what you'd call a pretty normal life. That can lead to addiction but it doesn't always. One very interesting thing I read is that most people who have major surgery actually don't get addicted to the morphine at all. This turned out to be both untrue and a major driver of the opioid addiction crisis.
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Dec 10, 2018 03:08
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