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Weldon Pemberton posted:because pulling the rug out from under people's feet after prescribing them is probably just going to lead to street drug use. This is pretty much it. The Oxy scourge made it 10x worse, but the problem simply comes down to people suffer chronic pain that Tylenol and Advil aren't going to touch, they get prescribed painkillers then the DEA scares their doctors and they get cut off. Except they are still in pain and if you can't get prescribed proper pain management drugs you'll turn to buying them illegally and when that fails heroin is next up. My wife worked with a guy who got in a motorcycle accident, lost his arm and his back and neck were destroyed. His neck so badly that his head was locked in position cocked so far to the side were his arm used to be his ear was on his shoulder. When his pain was being managed properly he was able to function just fine, hold a job and have a normal (for him) life. Then he got cut off because the DEA decided his doctor was writing too many pain scripts and the combined massive injury pain and withdrawal he ended up on heroin. He was never 'high' under the care of a doctor but you never know if the next batch of heroin is 50% baby laxative or almost pure. He lost his job, his heroin use went up until he OD'd twice. Luckily he got a morphine pump installed before his heroin use could kill him. Pharmacies contribute to it too, CVS can burn to the loving ground. I have the fun of a 'spastic colon'. My intestines are constantly writhing like a nest of snakes. Tack on getting internal and external cysts and there care days I feel like I swallowed a handful of nails. When I'm under the care if a doctor who manages the spasticity and pain I'm fine aside from the occasional days when even the drugs can't control it but even getting my scripts filled was a loving nightmare, luckily I have a insurance company that fills everything mail order now but before then I came drat close to hunting for smack just so I could stay employed. I don't ever mention it because the first reaction to finding out I take 40-50mg of oxycodone daily and the first reaction is Im some kind of junkie. I don't even get a buzz, he'll I don't even like the high from opiates but just being on painkillers regularly immediately marks you as just another addict abuser. Unless you have an obvious broken limb or visible injury people can't comprehend that yes, lots of people suffer chronic pain and it usually only gets managed by pure luck of finding a doctor and pharmacy willing to do it.
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Jan 21, 2016 05:45
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Maybe it started with Reagan and the "welfare queen" myth, maybe not, but in America we have this weird obsession with trying to root out addicts - real and imagined - and ignoring real suffering needing treatment. We'd rather leave a thousand people in genuine need out to dry rather than let one addict possibly abusing scripts go scot-free. Having gone through decades of my issues people just have this bizarre mental block when it comes to pain. We have drugs for thousands of chronic problems, many of the drugs used for those make opiates look like candy when it comes to addiction and side effects. Every person I've known that's been on Paxil won't touch it with someone else's dick, getting off long term use makes opiate withdrawals seem like quitting coffee. Its maddening that people accept long term prescriptions for everything except pain. Lots of people also can't seem to grasp that taking opiates for pain management you're not getting high off them (besides things like 'going to die soon' levels of things like cancer). Even then I will never understand why taking any drug that brings you to normal is fine but no more, taking something to feel good is for some reason unthinkable. Unless it's alcohol or now weed. There are non-opiate options that will handle some chronic pain but like any other drug because it works for some does not mean it works for everyone, Nevermind that pure opiates are extremely non-toxic while some of the non-opiate alternatives have side effects a mile long. Pain meds are also the only drugs that it's acceptable to add enough poison to make sure God forbid nobody dares take extra and possibly feel good. I get prescribed 10mg percocets not because I take that much at once (I break them into halves or thirds) but because it keeps my acitominiphan intake below 1g/day so my liver doesn't fail. I have prescription strength diarrhea meds that are laced with deadly nightshade to make sure I don't try and get high (Lomotil, each pill has .025mg of atropine). At least I'm safe if I get nerve gassed! Yes, I know atropine has medicinal uses but it's added to these just so you feel like death if you take 'too many'. It's especially stupid because diphenoxylate doesn't cross the blood brain barrier very well so you'd have to take a handful to get high. The acitominiphan is also stupid because if you really want to get high and not destroy your liver extracting the opiate takes ice water and a coffee filter. BarbarianElephant posted: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. One or even three scripts of Percocet is not going to make you addicted I wish this loving myth would die already. Great you didn't need it, some people do. Demonizing doctors who God forbid want to make sure you aren't in pain is exactly the problem. You don't get hooked on coke or even meth unless you use them regularly for weeks, opiates even less so if you take them as prescribed for pain and not just to get high. Toasticle fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jan 21, 2016 |
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Jan 21, 2016 15:43
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pangstrom posted:I have no doubt that opiates are the best option for some chronic pain patients, but I also have no doubt that they're not the best option for a lot of people who are taking that option. And that the pill mill closures are a good thing on the whole, even though things will probably have to get worse before they get better. Opiates are great for end-of-life stuff and (if you can shut the door) acute stuff. Alcohol and I guess nicotine are the only two drugs I have problems stopping, haven't had a drink in 10 years at least. The fact that they are legal just makes it that much more depressing. And I've done quite a few other drugs. And I agree and said the Oxy epidemic was loving evil, I just wish it hadn't led to therefore all opiates are evil. But again, addiction from taking as prescribed is worlds easier to get over than from abuse. If you aren't No Butt Stuff and intentionally abuse them there's no little to no psychological addiction and getting over the physical if you step down your dosage gradually over a few weeks is not that unpleasant (YMMV as always). Baclofen has been found to almost eliminate withdrawal and I can vouch personally that it does. I take 60mg a day and before I moved to mail order refills when I'd get issues with pharmacies I discovered that the baclofen got rid of almost all withdrawal, essentially going from extreme pain to 'this sucks but I'll live" as long as I didn't have an 'attack'. If it worked better as an anti spasmodic I'd drop the opiates in a heartbeat. Pill mill doctors were defiantly a thing especially where I live (WPB Florida) but before that opiates were not that big of a deal, you could get refills by phone as long as you saw your PCP every three months but thanks to people abusing that to hell and back people who really do need them now have to go through hell. Even though I have alcohol issues I don't think that means other people should not be able to get alcohol but because of people like No Butt Stuff just using them to get stoned for a year people who do actually need them get penalized which is my problem. Edit: What are your feelings on alcohol and say Paxil? Alcohol withdrawal and benzo withdrawal can actually kill you, most people trying to get off Paxil will say it's months of living hell, forget feeling poo poo for 3 weeks, try 6 months of seriously contemplating suicide. If addiction is the most important factor to consider, why does it only apply to things like opiates when there are dozens if not hundreds of other prescription drugs or legal things that are far worse to kick, that's not even counting things like I think it was a toenail fungus med that had "sudden death" as a possible 'side effect', Edit 2: Ketoconazole. Side effects are potential liver damage severe enough to require a liver transplant and sudden death due to heart problems. For fungal infections (it has other uses granted) . Pure opiates when not abused you risk 3-4 weeks of feeling like you have a severe flu but are otherwise essentially non-toxic but becaus some people abuse them to get high it's somehow worse. Toasticle fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 01:37
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KingFisher posted:Sorry I just don't get it. Some people use just to get high. But some, possibly many become addicts because: -They are in chronic pain that OTC anti inflamitories don't help. -They, under the care of a doctor, get their pain managed. -Assholes not unlike you don't like people taking opiate painkillers, more draconian laws get passed, doctors and pharmacies get threatened and the patient gets cut off sometime without even weaning them off. -The pain is still there, now amplified by sudden opiate withdrawal -Many start buying off the street but the street cost of a single Percocet can be up to $20. -For $20 you can get enough heroin to be equivalent to $100 worth of pills -The news starts freaking out over the "heroin epidemic", return to step three. I'm in that category but have not hit the street stage. I've gotten loving tired of explaining to people that chronic pain is a thing and no, aspirin does not stop many of it, in my case my digestive system spasiming 24/7. If you take one slice of time, no the pain is not more than a 4 or 5 on that pain scale. Imagine a dull throbbing headache. Tolerable, sure. For a day. How about after 3 days. A week. A month. Years. It never stops. You can't concentrate. You can't sleep. You can't enjoy anything because part of your brain just wants the loving pain to stop. Try keeping a job because you're in the bathroom an hour a day making GBS threads out everything in your GI tract till it's just stomach acid because you dared eat lunch. I watched a guy who worked with my wife, lost his arm in a motorcycle accident, his neck was so hosed his head was locked ear to shoulder and his back was nothing but ruptured discs. When his pain was managed he had a job, had a normal life as far as someone in his condition could have. Then the DEA leaned on his doctor for "writing too many painkiller prescriptions" trying to find a new doctor put him on the "doctor shopping" blacklist. He lost his job and became an evil junkie because all he could get was heroin. He OD'd but survived and luckily for him finally found a doctor who got a morphine pump put in his spine. The sole reason he became a 'junkie' was because the medical field threw him aside and left him to suffer horribly. A big step in stopping this "opiate epidemic" is stop loving Demonizing people in pain. So they take an addictive painkiller. If it lets them lead normal, productive, happy lives who the gently caress cares. Be under the care of a doctor to make sure it's properly managed and leave us the gently caress alone and you've cut the number of people turning to heroin. Even if it's 10% it's 10% less people turning to what literally is their only option. I'm not sorry for a wall of text rant because nobody ever even acknowledges this part of it and instead focuses on how to 'stop' them, get them addicted to even worse drugs like suboxone (try it for a month and try to quit. See how many days it takes before you want to eat a bullet) and ignoring or dismissing that some people do have chronic pain.
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Mar 25, 2016 18:32
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Cugel the Clever posted:How do you have any right to flatly deny anyone the choice over their own lives? If you don't want one, don't get one. Because it's a psychopathic 'choice' whether it's being denied relief from pain or just wanting to get high, just give them the loving drug. If someone wants to die because they can't take the pain or it makes their lives less miserable you are hosed in the head if just giving them the drug isn't an option. The guy I mentioned who lost his arm was suicidal because he was living in constant agony. As soon as he got the morphine pump installed he didn't want to die anymore. Every heroin addict I've known who just wanted to get high lead perfectly functional lives. Had jobs, were happy, they just chose opiates over say alcohol. I knew indirectly some addicts who didn't want to do anything but get high but the number who just wanted to be drunk 24/7 was five times higher. In both cases it was almost always because they had lovely lives and it was their escape. Let them be happy if that's what makes them happy. What the gently caress is wrong with you?
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Mar 28, 2016 05:53
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