Should the "war on opiates/pain killers" be better described as "war on pain relilef"? (sore, migraines)
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Sitting here right now with a cracked tooth with no pain meds, needing to wait one week for my booked up dentist to take me, because no other dentist within 50 miles accepts my crappy dental insurance. Now I know I'm not the only one who knows this feeling of wanting to kill themselves....
So you have NOT tried otc pain meds, millions use them for pain from head to toe and in between.
very good point. I know some people really do need their pain meds, but many of us have learned to live with the discomfort and are doing just fine. I have chronic back pain. In fact I am going to see my PC doctor for my check up in a few minutes and going to ask him if he suggests I do anything more than I am doing, but at 81 I am not about to have surgery nor depend on pain meds. I might be willing to try a shot but otherwise I take advil when I just can't handle it anymore. Most of the time I do whatever I can to calm myself down.
I agree, living with advancing bodywide OA I do a lot of other stuff to help calm pain and I manage but not willing to jump to the opioids, I've been there and have some in the drawer but will not. They don't do much more for me than ibuprofen.
How many people have bad side effects from NSAIDS on a yearly basis? You do know that those NSAIDS you tout can cause hearing issues among other things after long term use right?
Here's the thing, every person can and do have different reactions to different substances, even those so-called "safe" ones like Homeopathic or "Natural" ones can do damage. Heck, even Vitamins can poison and kill.
There are people who are opiate addicts just has there are people who are addicted to all manner of substances that are really bad for THEM but we don't pass laws that actually hurt people and/or demonize all those people.
As I said all drugs can do damage, so far I'm good at almost 80 and time will tell where I end up. I take a lot of supplements and COULD BE they are helping counteract things that the drug I do take is helping...don't know, who knows. I just know the hard drugs are not for me, what other people do is their business...but I do read about dementia and major hearing loss (family member) and for me didn't find opioids any better than ibuprofen. And I guess we all choose what we want to be addicted to. As I drink my morning coffee..I could change that any day to green tea, but enjoy my java.
I have not read through all eleven pages, so please excuse.
This subject just drives me crazy because the national media has gotten hold of it and confused legitimate pain sufferers with recreational drug abusers.
And yes, some legitimate pain users 'graduate' to abusers. Let's say that right up front. That isn't a drug problem, it's a people problem. If they turn to the street for drugs to feed their habit that isn't part of the legitimate pain management user.
A legitimate pain sufferer is taking maybe four 10 mg Oxy each day to control pain. Maybe they are using this medicine to knock down pain in concert with a fentanyl patch to control ongoing pain. It is prescribed by a legitimate doctor and is closely monitored by both the doctor and the 'state'.
An abuser is taking thirty or forty 10 mg Oxy each day which they are buying in the street. It is incomprehensible that anyone could take this volume of medicine and still be alive, but apparently there are, and they do. Regularly. Daily.
These are the people who are abusing Oxy, or whatever they are taking. These are the people the 'news" needs to be defining they are looking at when they talk about "opioid abuse". These are recreational (sic) users who have no relation to people who are taking prescribed medication for pain. These are the people whose parents they interview after their death and who plead "someone should do something."
There is nothing you can do when people wish to abuse a substance. It took fifty years and billions of dollars to get cigarettes off the street, and they are still not gone. It will take a similar time to get opioids off the street. As long as there is (illegitimate) demand, the pharmacy companies will produce to meet that demand. That's how capitalism works. People, on both sides, are willing to violate the law to make money and take illicit medicine.
Please, let us stop confusing the two. The constant ignorant media harping (just to get viewers, I suspect) that "we have to stop opioids" gets old and is hurtful to prescribers and users who operate inside an already well regulated system. People who want to be good citizens are doing so; users and doctors who don't wish to be admirable are always finding ways to beat the system. Look at Medicare fraud, for example. BILLIONS of Dollars.
How do I know this? I take opioids, by prescription, for several inches of my spine which is shattered fighting a war for America so people could have the right to abuse drugs to their hearts content. Don't tell me it doesn't hurt. I'll show you my fingerprints in the wall where I try to get to the bathroom at night. Some days you pray you will die. Some days you pray you won't die and end the pain. Opioids knock off the top 10% of the pain. The rest you just live with. But, please don't make my life more miserable (truly, I am NOT a miserable person; I am by nature very happy) and make me listen to the constant harping abut how we 'have to get all opioids (the opioid epidemic) banned" by people, well intentioned, I am sure, who don't have a clue about what they talking. Users are NOT abusers. Abusers are NOT legitimate users. The media is focusing on the latter, but they don't tell you that! Now you know.
I have not read through all eleven pages, so please excuse.
This subject just drives me crazy because the national media has gotten hold of it and confused legitimate pain sufferers with recreational drug abusers.
And yes, some legitimate pain users 'graduate' to abusers. Let's say that right up front. That isn't a drug problem, it's a people problem. If they turn to the street for drugs to feed their habit that isn't part of the legitimate pain management user.
Its neither, or both. It is, and should be treated as, a health problem. My uncle is on warfarin, and he has to be tested to make sure he won't clot up inside or bleed out. Plenty of other drugs that serve to treat much more mundane conditions require follow up and monitoring.
So, to the OP's point, I really don't see what's wrong with pain management doctors monitoring through lab work, interviewing, and evaluating their patients to avoid some people "graduating." In any case, I think that we often miss that many that "graduate" don't go from someone with that takes their meds as prescribed to someone that scores smack on the street, or even visits the local pill-peddler. I'd have to imagine the most common situation is somewhere in the middle, someone that maybe isn't as honest with their doctor as they should be, or doesn't tell one about the other...
Sitting here right now with a cracked tooth with no pain meds, needing to wait one week for my booked up dentist to take me, because no other dentist within 50 miles accepts my crappy dental insurance. Now I know I'm not the only one who knows this feeling of wanting to kill themselves....
And your dentist won't prescribe any serious pain medicine?
I am so sorry for what you're going through. It is literally hell on earth.
I heard that mixing Tylenol and Ibuprofen together is better than only one of them, but I never tried it and I'm skeptical when you're talking about nerve pain in the mouth.
Check and see if Kratom is legal in your state. It's the red varieties that control pain. In my state, we can buy it in gas stations. Or you can buy it online. Capsules are easier to take than swallowing the powder form. I just read a couple of accounts where people used it for tooth pain with miraculous results, so it's worth a try.
In any case, I think that we often miss that many that "graduate" don't go from someone with that takes their meds as prescribed to someone that scores smack on the street, or even visits the local pill-peddler. I'd have to imagine the most common situation is somewhere in the middle, someone that maybe isn't as honest with their doctor as they should be, or doesn't tell one about the other...
Yes. The thing is, even if the pain is 100% legitimate, you still build up a tolerance (so you need more or stronger opiates to get the same effect) and a physical dependence (so you suffer withdrawal symptoms if you don't get your usual dose) if you take opiate pain medication a daily basis. So you've got patients who, if they've been on prescribed opiate pain relief for a long period of time, have gradually progressed to sometimes astronomical doses. Now that those high-dose prescriptions are being cracked down on, a lot of people turn to other ways of getting more medication - not necessarily to chase a high, just to get the level of relief a more reasonable dose used to provide. I think more typical approaches than getting with an illegal drug dealer would be things like seeing multiple docs, getting a relative's meds in addition to one's own, things like that. Or just taking too much, then suffering until they can get a refill.
I suspect "tolerance breaks" (a la what marijuana users often do of their own accord, taking a break from using the drug so that their tolerance will reset to a lower level) will become an increasingly formally used strategy in the future for patients on opioid pain relief, to keep those doses from creeping up and up to sky-high levels, but it's a very hard sell to the patient. Partly because obviously if a person's in chronic pain, they don't want to sacrifice weeks to suffering, especially if they're needing to be functional for job, family, etc. But I think also because it forces them to acknowledge the withdrawal symptoms, and therefore that they're dependent on the drug, which people don't like to admit, as it's quite a fine line between that and addiction, and addiction is seen as a moral failing and/or a weakness.
It's truly awful how the media, the feds and God knows who else are making it so difficult for legit pain sufferers to get their pain meds. My mother died from pulmonary fibrosis (she also had neuropathy, severe arthritis, etc.) just before the so-called "opiate crisis" hit the fan with the media. She used to be able to get mail order bottles of percocets. Our main concern for her in her final years (she was living with a death sentence) was what hospice people call "comfort care." There is no doubt that if my mom were still alive that she would be going through all sorts of hell getting her meds.
It's funny.....I once had a horrific cough that I couldn't get rid of. My doctor finally had to prescribe me robitussin with codeine. I asked my doc why the codeine. Well apparently the mild euphoric elements of codeine actually serve as a "distraction" in your mind which keeps you from coughing. Sure enough, my cough ended in no time. So you when you hear about legit pain suffers talking about a slight euphoria they might be experiencing with the drug, the freaking media needs to understand that this is supposed to happen to some degree. I know if my mom didn't feel it, she needed more meds. But she only took what she needed because she was on a number of other drugs. She didn't want to be a zombie.
Last edited by greenbook; 06-20-2018 at 04:47 PM..
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