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How Big Pharma Hooked America On Legal Heroin
pigrabbitbear writes "The active ingredient in OxyContin, oxycodone, isn't a new compound. It was originally synthesized in Germany in 1916. The patent on the medication had expired well before Purdue Pharma, a Stamford, Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company and the industry leader in pain medication, released it under the brand name in 1996. The genius of Purdue's continued foray into pain-management medication – they had already produced versions of hydromorphone, oxycodone, fentanyl, codeine, and hydrocodone – was twofold. They not only created a drug from an already readily available compound, but they were able to essentially re-patent the active ingredient by introducing a time-release element. Prior to the 1990s, strong opioid medications were not routinely given for miscellaneous or chronic, moderately painful conditions; the strongest classes of drugs were often reserved for the dying. But Purdue parlayed their time-release system not only into the patent for OxyContin. They also went on a PR blitz, claiming their drug was unique because of the time-release element and implied that it was so difficult to abuse that the risk of addiction was 'under 1%.'"
The vast majority of people who are prescribed opiates do not become addicted to them. Most people who have try heroin or cocaine do not become junkies/fiends who destroy their lives in an attempt to stay high all the time. The "one hit and you're hooked for life" thing is just prohibition propaganda.
Why in hell would you throw away a legal supply of opiate painkillers ? You put 'em in the back of the medicine cabinet, and take them with you on camping trips and such, so if a member of your party has a real problem (crushed limbs, deep lacerations, etc.) you have something for the pain on the way back out, or (worst case) waiting for a medevac.
And the Anti-Drug lobby writes another opinion piece that medicine should not be treating pain and pharma is out of control by providing new pain management options.
The reason pain prescriptions have gone up is that medicine isn't telling people to take 2 asprin and fuck off. The reason my father has a fucked up GI system is because of the asprin abuse because he was never given the option of real pain management.
As a chronic pain sufferer I wish every one of these fucktards that think no one should be on pain management could experience a month of what I do every day. The constant thoughts of suicide, the near complete lack of life, enjoyment or any satisfaction in life, the exhaustion and the constant work just getting out of bed every day. There is a reason there is an ex law enforcement organization devoted to campaigning proper pain management and it's because some of those lucky people get to experience real chronic pain.
Someone that's never experienced chronic severe pain has no fucking idea what it's like.
With you right up until 'allopathic'. The use of that word outs you as an 'alternative' medicine nutjob.
If the pain model used in medicine is immature and inadequate, it still represents the best we have. I very much hope that if it is immature and inadequate that some serious research is going into that area.
Because any of the alt-med crap may as well have been pulled out of my butthole. I'd rather have immature than a blend of fantasy and charlatanry.
I am a medical marijuana patient in California.
I also was a habitual pot user 25 years ago when I was a teen, for about a year.
I agree that "harmless" is a stupid thing to call anything that you ignite and inhale into your lungs, and would concede that it might be mildly physically addictive.
If so, however, it is FAR less physically addictive that caffeine (coffee, soda). The withdrawal symptoms, if any, are FAR less severe than those of a Starbucks addict going cold turkey.
As far as psychologically addictive, there is no such thing. Addiction is bio-chemical. You cannot be "addicted" to gambling, shopping, masturbation, etc. These are compulsive behaviors - they are NOT addiction. That is not meant to insult sufferers, compulsive behavior patterns are an illness and are FAR worse to deal with than simple physical addition. With physical addiction, you simply need to detox.
But compulsive behavior cannot be blamed on the object of that compulsion, whether it be cannabis, eBay shopping, sex, or collecting beanie babies.
Beanie babies are not a gateway drug. But they have bankrupted people and destroyed lives. Ban THEM? Of course not.
If anything can be said to be addictive about these things, it is an addiction to brain chemicals the behaviors cause the release of. If you are addicted to your own serotonin, you are NOT a "stamp collecting addict."
You need treatment, but stamps are not the cause.
Cannabis, if it has a physical addiction component, has one that is far less severe than many substances that have no regulation whatsoever, and are sold to kids in machines in some of their High Schools.
This space available.
Seriously, though, there is a vast difference between taking a prescribed drug and becoming addicted to it and using a proscribed drug for the explicit purpose of getting high.
Yes, the first is where you're being abused by people who are supposed to care for you, and the second is living your life like a free person.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In fact, because this has become accepted fact throughout the psychological and medical fields, they are adding official diagnosis of Caffeine Withdrawal to the latest diagnostic standards (mind you, they are also dropping the terms Abuse and Dependence and moving to simply Substance Use Disorders, with a spectrum of No Diagnosis, Mild, Moderate, and Severe).
It seems to me that the listed symptoms of Cannabis Withdrawal are less severe than those of Caffeine Withdrawal.
Many chronic pain sufferers will tell you that they had never imagined it was even possible to feel so much pain. They live in a universe of pain unknown to most of us. Try to imagine yourself in bed with pain shooting through your body that is so intense that you cannot move. It seems it could get no worse, but any effort to move doubles, triples the intensity. So there you lie weeping but not sobbing because that would hurt even more. Now imagine that you know for a fact that there is a pill you could take that would let you get out of bed and go to work. But you won't get it. Why? Because the DOJ does not trust you not to sell it on the street. How does that make you feel?