Your pain is gone and you're able to function normally. After a few weeks your supply runs out and the doctor refuses to renew your prescription despite your injury still causing you pain. The doctor provides no after-care or advice to avoid addiction, writes on your chart that you've exhibited "drug seeking behavior" and tells you to leave.
Your buddy says he has a friend, who hooks you up with a few Oxies (at least you think they're Oxy, the writing is in Chinese), and you're back to feeling "normal" again. After a while you run out of money, but your friend can supply you heroin at a lower price. Congrats you're a junkie, despite being a tee-totaler just a few months before.
Kinda condensed and I'm sure many people on HN will say "but that wouldn't be me". But it is the slope for many, many people in this country.
Yes the US proscribes opiate based pain killers at a higher level then Socialized Medicine nations, mainly because American Patients do not accept the "live with the pain" treatment you get from Government run care where they refuse to provide pain killers unless you are screaming in pain, and even then they give you a Advil and tell you to "suck it up butter cup"
Screw that.
There are all kinds of people that cant not get the medication they have a legitimate medical need for because the these new crack downs on Opiate based pain killers, now these people are having to live with chronic pain because the doctor fear being sent to prison by the DEA, because the DEA knows more about medicine than a doctor does clearly
In your Hypothetical from Prescription to Heroin you blame the doctor, I blame the DEA. The artificial limits and constraints the DEA is placing on medical professionals is interfering with patient care, and causing some patients to turn on street drugs instead of proper medication
Contrary to what the DEA thinks, combating Drug abuse is not a police matter, it is a medical matter and should be left in the hand of medical doctors not the legal system
The first, and perhaps most important, is that you think opioids are a suitable treatment for long term pain. They aren't. There is little evidence of efficacy of opioids for treatment of long term pain. Your suggestion - that we treat pain using opioids - i) doesn't treat pain, and ii) creates addicts.
More information here: https://www.fpm.ac.uk/faculty-of-pain-medicine/opioids-aware
> "live with the pain" treatment you get from Government run care where they refuse to provide pain killers unless you are screaming in pain
Quite clearly nonsense.
> The artificial limits
No, these are evidence based restrictions.
Further in typical UK practice they claim it is not helpful but offer no alternative treatments, claiming it should be discontinued even if there are no alternative.
basically what I said "Suck it up buttercup" but they state it in a more PC and nanny government terminology
>Quite clearly nonsense.
hmmm
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Pain/Pages/Longtermpain.aspx
"You may also be referred for complementary therapy to see if that helps with the pain. You should be offered advice on how to better manage your pain on a day-to-day basis, such as by using self-help techniques."
Again, No pain Killer, just walk it off or deal with it. That is the UK policy on long term chronic Pain. Suck it up and learn to live with it.
>No, these are evidence based restrictions.
No infact they are not, not in the case of the DEA/US Drug Control Policy anyway
There is not a single drug control policy in the US that is "evidence based" most of is not even about the actual drugs, it is about power, control, money, and about 100 other things but not public safety or drugs
Untrue.
And yet, oddly, you frittered away the opportunity to identify even one piece of “incorrect crap” to instead go off on a rant about the DEA. At least I think that’s what you’re on about.
1. I addressed how the OP blamed the doctors as the source of people becoming addicted to herion, I believe that to be false
2. I address why in a few limited cases where person starts out on prescriptions and ends up on heroin they are likely there due to aggressive and unethical Drug Control Policy enforced by the DEA
3. The OP implied that Opaties are Over proscribed, i disagree. Further would like to know if the OP has ever suffered or know anyone to suffer from Chronic Plain, and if they would enjoy seeing their loved on suffer daily because of the Actions of the DEA.
You are correct it is a Rant ont eh DEA however, I am 1000000000% opposed to the war on drugs, I feel it is single largest source of freedom in the nation. it is directly lead to the erosion on almost all constitutional rights, has put doctors having to choose between what is best for themselves (i.e staying out of jail) and what is best for the patient (i.e proper pain medication) and has been an abject failure in reducing drug us.
You believe based on what evidence? Have you done any research into this or is it just a 'gut feeling'? To put it another way, what do you find misleading about the following video?
Poverty and the lack of opportunities to participate constructively in society do really fucked up things to human psychology. The current wave of opiate addiction frequently occurs as the result of prescribed pain medication.
>Why even try it? I feel in the media everywhere it is said how terrible it is.
The signals people pick up from their peer groups have a much larger impact on their behavior than media ever could.
This just begs the question. Why did the peers do it? Surely you see someone clearly messed up after doing drugs. Why go in follow them? There are other mindless things you could do like play video games to achieve a similar effect.
I also wonder why you are so certain that video games are a substitute for drug use. Do you also not play video games?
You may not start to see the negative impact of drug use until years later. By then it's too late.
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1...
http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2011/Sta...
In 2009 0.57% of the population between 15 and 64 took opiates (products of the poppy such as opium or heroin) and 5.9% of the same population took opioids, of which 5.6% were prescribed opioids.
It's got much worse since then.
Roughly 10% of people taking opioid medication will become addicted to them. (Mostly people taking it long term).
https://www.dea.gov/divisions/hq/2015/hq110415.shtml
> Since 2002, prescription drug deaths have outpaced those of cocaine and heroin combined. Abuse of controlled prescription drugs is higher than that of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, MDMA, and PCP combined.
*Not quite true, I have several hobbies, including designing games
As for how they get started, I've been prescribed a large bottle of powerful painkillers for having my wisdom teeth removed. It's not hard to get exposure under doctor's orders in the US.
2. Desperation and a sense of inescapable hopelessness can make a whole lot of people do things they never thought they'd consider doing.
>Krueger’s study linked county prescription rates to labor force data from the past 15 years
Also, probably boredom.
You have to understand what middle America looks like today. It used to be vibrant, now it's nothing but shells of ghost towns. This happened for a few reasons:
1. Walmartization killed all the independent shops. 2. Agribusiness made family farming untenable. 3. Out of country manufacturing.
1. Walmart - always lower prices (people want cheap crap)
2. So...cheap food means scale it up really big (agrabusiness)
3. And cheap non-food mean outsourced manufacturing (because people want big salaries to buy lots of cheap crap)
...and perhaps that's where it started, that last bit:
People want big salaries (or paychecks, or pay - whatever), so they can buy more stuff (there's also the whole "easy credit" thing - but that's another discussion). They want that stuff cheaper. So businesses searched for ways to make it cheaper: Scale stuff up, have fewer employees (or pay them less), and outsource manufacturing.
Classic death spiral.
/I know I am over-simplifying things here...
What the media shows you is the consequences irresponsible use. You dont need to go shoot up laced heroin in a back alley to understand. I am always amused when people correlate drug use with poverty or some other nonsense, implying that white collar professionals dont do drugs. Successful people are just less likely to be caught and/or open about use, I think.
Oh, by the way, alcohol is a drug. Caffeine is a drug. The distinction between legal and illegal drugs is entirely arbitrary and in many cases unconstitutional.