> The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them.

How do you measure that? Opioid overdoses accounted for at least 72,800 deaths last year [0] and there are countless more addicts out there whose entire lives are ruined because of that addiction. Many of those people, if they ever recover, will never take opioids again for any real medical pain relief like you did for your wisdom teeth because of the very real risk of relapse. Additionally, opioid withdrawal is, according to almost everyone who's gone through it, is one of the worst experiences you can feel.

I'm not taking the side that it definitely doesn't outwheigh the need of those who genuinely need them. On the whole I actually probably agree with that. But stating that so confidently and ignoring the very real pain, lost lives, and broken families caused by opioid addiction because you had your wisdom teeth pulled and wanted opioids feels pretty dismissive and not a serious argument.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7226a4.htm

How many millions of people use opioids and do not abuse them, nor get addicted?

I don't know, but even if I did you're making a weak argument. You're comparing temporary pain relief for lost and destroyed lives.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but I had wisdom teeth out recently, and took ibuprofen and nothing else (they did give me a prescription for a heavier-duty NSAID, but from past experience those are no fun). It was _fine_, there was some pain, but that’s par for the course.

Opiods seem to be treated as almost essential for dental surgery in the US, and as a rare escalation path elsewhere.

Same experience. No doubt there will be exceptions but prescribing them as standard seems like negligence.

> The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them.

I can see the argument here morally (and I agree with it), but in practice I know far more people negatively affected by drug addictions and drug addicts than I know people unable to get pain management medication they need. I imagine my experience may be typical, and so I am unsurprised the pendulum has swung so far.

One question to ask yourself though is whether you're experience both confirmation bias and a bias brought about by visibility and/or age. If you're younger, you're less likely to know people with conditions that require pain management. Likewise the people around you suffering from such conditions might not be open about it because either they've already been told they just have to suck it up and live with the pain, or because they've learned that complaining/being assertive about their pain is a good way to get labeled an addict and get even worse treatment.

I was arguing that such a complaint will fall flat with many people if they share the same general experience as me. Not that it’s “objectively” true or false, assuming you can find something objective to measure. In fact I don’t think you can find something useful to measure objectively, and will necessarily fall back on subjective arguments about what is better, more important, more moral.

You'll pardon me for saying something that sounds a little "woo," but what will enlighten you the most is regarding Group B (who get opioids or benzos or whatever and suffer addiction) as a subset of Group A (who need treatment and medication but aren't getting it), namely that Group B is not getting something in their lives which they desperately need.

Then you may see the unitary flaw in the system, at perhaps a larger scale, wherein people are not receiving what they need. One "right-sized" problem, not two problems. Why addiction, or better, why addiction now, what has caused the rise in such? Whatever that need was, were it met, would prevent addiction and we might then cease adding yet one more special of lenses, mirrors, and films to our ever-evolving panopticon, one more trackable in the Salesforce of the Surveillance State.

We need to look at some reasons as to why people can see, say, Tranq in Philadelphia and say, "That looks like my best option, there."

I don’t disagree that addiction indicates a lack of something broadly related to “care”. I just take issue with claiming “it is necessarily better that people in pain receive care, and addicts do what addicts do”.

If this is indeed a spectrum (certainly debatable), with increased access definitionally increasing addiction, the argument that one side of the spectrum is strictly better is wrong.

I don’t live in your skin, but I had all of my wisdom teeth extracted under local anesthetics without sedation. And I never even needed an NSAID.

Maybe it hurt you that bad, but it’s not par for the course.

That’s great for you. My partner was also not given anything when her wisdom teeth were removed. As the dentists anesthetic wore off, on the drive home, she started crying, then screaming as we pulled into the driveway. I got her in bed and gave her Tylenol (dentists recommendation), but she was crying, curled up in a ball, unable to move and barely talk, couldn’t drink water, just grasping her legs and suffering with tears streaming down her face.

Luckily, when I called the dentist back and frantically explained the situation, they let us get an opioid. She took a minimal amount, and was able to function normally. She only used a few pills in total over the course of a couple days, but it prevented absolute heartbreaking agony.

So that’s great that it worked for you. But your case has no bearing on somebody in the other situations either, so you don’t need to bring it up as a gotcha.

That is well out of the norm and should be treated as such. Some people will need it, but that’s no reason to spew opioids on anyone who has a small procedure.

You don’t and your judgement of someone else’s pain is not relevant to this thread or respectful and is the exact line of thinking that leads to people’s pain not being taken seriously.

And if we take pain “seriously” and give opioids for what should be minimal pain, we are facilitating addiction. I’m not judging the pain, only the response of giving a prescription off the bat.

> I don’t live in your skin

You should have stopped there.

When someone claims they need two weeks of opioids for postoperative pain, it is relevant to point out that it is abnormal.