Given Choice, Patients Will Choose Cannabis Over Prescribed Opioids

Re:Given Choice, Patients Will Choose Cannabis Over Prescrib... by M_Grey on Tuesday February 28, 2017 @10:20PM (#13760743)

It may not be as simple as all or nothing you know. It could be adjunct therapy for people who would normally reach for another pill. Truthfully though, I also wonder which pain cannabis is most effective for, compared to opiates. The truth seems to be that opiates are broadly ineffective at the relief of severe pain in many people too, but they're also toxic. It may be that this is better if only because of the lack of toxicity.

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Re:Given Choice, Patients Will Choose Cannabis Over Prescrib... by Retric on Tuesday February 28, 2017 @10:37PM (#13760850)

Opioids reduce, but don't block extreme pain so much as make you not care about it. They work really well for short term, less extreme pain, but they become less effective over time and they side effects are nasty.

So my guess is people with long term pain are probably better off with canibis long term even if Opiods work really well for post operation pain for example.

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Re:Given Choice, Patients Will Choose Cannabis Over Prescrib... by amalag on Tuesday February 28, 2017 @10:42PM (#13760889)

Would be great if opiods never left the hospital.

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Re:Given Choice, Patients Will Choose Cannabis Over Prescrib... by adanto6840 on Tuesday February 28, 2017 @10:51PM (#13760940)

There would probably be a lot of people that legitimately would never be able to leave the hospital -- there really are people out there with legitimate chronic pain.

I say this after having had a C6-C7 spine fusion surgery -- prior to that, the pain was incredible. And two or three years ago I couldn't have even imagined what that kind of pain felt like, until I was actually suffering it. Luckily surgery was incredibly effective, and I hated having to take pain pills (made it difficult to work), but the pre-op alternative (living with constant pain) wasn't very great.

I certainly didn't want to sit in a hospital just to be able to move around a bit -- and I couldn't have immediate surgery, though I did have surgery as soon as I was allowed to (primarily due to insurance).

I'm sure there are people out there with far worse pain, and in many cases likely untreatable causes. Putting all of those people in the hospital certainly isn't going to help with insurance prices, nor is it a particularly humane way to treat people in the general sense.

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Re:Given Choice, Patients Will Choose Cannabis Over Prescrib... by emcq on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @12:36AM (#13761464)

I was on opiods for a month. At the time it was prohibitive to get out of bed, let alone go to the hospital. I dont remember it much but sleeping on my own bed beats the heck out of the hospital.

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Re:Given Choice, Patients Will Choose Cannabis Over Prescrib... by DanBC on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @03:05AM (#13762149)

People in long term pain need better access to specialist pain management clinics with the full range of interventions - exercise, alternative prescribing, etc. But even with Opioids Aware prescribing, and even if cannabis is legalised, some people will still need opioids.

http://www.fpm.ac.uk/faculty-of-pain-medicine/opioids-aware

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