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Most Teens Who Abuse Opioids First Got Them From a Doctor (livescience.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Live Science: Most American teenagers who abuse opioid drugs first received the drugs from a doctor, a new study finds. Researchers looked at trends in the use of prescription opioids among U.S. adolescents from 1976 to 2015. They found a strong correlation between teens' taking the drugs for medical reasons and then later taking them for "non-medical" reasons, or in other words, abusing them, according to the study published today (March 20) in the journal Pediatrics. In 2015, the the most recent year of the study, 8 percent of adolescents reported abusing prescription opioids, and the majority of them had been prescribed opioids previously, the researchers found. The U.S. consumes about 80 percent of the world's prescription opioid supply. There has been consistent growth in the number of prescriptions written for opioids in the U.S., rising from 76 million prescriptions in 1991 to 207 million in 2013, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. However, the new study revealed that among teens, both medical and non-medical use of opioid medications has declined in recent years, starting in 2013. The decline may be due to careful prescribing practices, Sean McCabe, a research professor at the University of Michigan, said. There are several medical procedures that teens may undergo for which opioids are recommended for pain management. But doctors can be careful about the amount of these drugs they prescribe, and limit refills. Parents can make sure that any leftover pills are discarded. Another report was published today in the journal Pediatrics that analyzed data from the National Poison Data System. It found that of all 188,468 prescription opioid exposures reported for youth under 20 years old between 2000 and 2015, nearly all the exposures occurred at a home and were most common among children under 5, accounting for six of every 10 cases. According to NPR, those children were able to get their hands on the medication because it was improperly stored or was in a purse.
and only care about profits. This is more proof of that.
Our Attorney-General has told us that it was all because of pot!!!!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Spoken like a true non-alcoholic and also as someone that, if they attended medical school, failed fucking miserably.
Food isn't a necessity. It is a choice. Everyone likes to be well-fed. Everyone. But stop being so narcissistic thinking that you have to not starve all the time. Life isn't supposed to be like that.
No, it's actually a medical condition. Opiate withdrawal is not just a lack of feeling good. Addiction can happen even when the drugs are taken exactly as prescribed. Sometimes even that significant drawback is justified by the amount of pain the person would otherwise be in.
If the DEA would quit practicing medicine without a license it would be a solvable medical problem rather than a legal issue.
all this crap about drug addicts that cant handle it and when you dig deaper they always had issues with other stuff in life as well as drugs and getting along with people.
WHY am i so angry i had a doctor after 16 years on percacet that allows me to go nicely by in life say the following in front of another doctor.....
"due to the political climate would you take ten less this month and ten less next month?"
I WAS FLOORED till i started seeing all this cry baby crap over pain medicine...if you cant handle it DONT take it....and as its regulated thsi is your doctors problem...NOT A REASON TO DEFLECT OTHER POLITICAL PROBLEMS TO THIS NON-ISSUE.
OH and you idiot fentanal users ...if you are human you can be told a tiny bit can kill you....if then you continue ot use it you should not have me suffer cause you wish to kill yourself by drug use. I SAY GOOD RIDDENCE to that bad genetics.
We also should not only not waste tax dollars on these nit wits but should herd them into a small town and flood it with more of it to finish the job. ...noooo you will have me be suffering and i will get to point ...
If you havent had chronic pain they you won't understand the torture i go through without pain relief
A) I kill myself
B) start criminal activity to get illegal heroin.
YOU CHOOSE.
Why hasn't there been a study with spree killings and prescriptions? Most of the ones I looked into had a "disorder" / "treatment" while they were a teen.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Then kindly explain how withdrawal DTs can be FATAL!?
Thanks, state-subsidized healthcare!
Why? What does this have to do with computers? At all? In any way, shape, or form?
I dunno, man. I found this YouTube video quite convincing: Addiction
In high school and college, every now and then someone would have surgery or have a bad injury, and they'd come back from the doctor bragging about the drugs they got. It was like a free pass to get high, and no one was ever concerned that it might lead to addiction because the drugs were prescribed by a doctor, so of course they aren't dangerous. It seems due to a failure to educate young people properly and a success on the drug companies' part to make their product seem like magic.
...for reducing their profits by spending their money on our health.
People of all ages abuse prescription drugs. But don't let facts get in the way of your moral outrage. Those darn teens!!
The Beginning of the End for Donald Trump
Mark yesterday, the 20th of March 2017, as that day.
No, it's actually a medical condition. Opiate withdrawal is not just a lack of feeling good. Addiction can happen even when the drugs are taken exactly as prescribed. Sometimes even that significant drawback is justified by the amount of pain the person would otherwise be in.
I was prescribed opiates for pain after I had spinal surgery on c4-c6 in my neck. I was on them for months. The haze they produced meant I didn't really care about anything at all. This was not normal. It began to dawn on me that I was dependent on these drugs. I posted about the the withdrawal symptoms of opiates while I was going through the withdrawals.
I discussed this again with the doctor who confirmed I had been on them long enough to develop an opiate dependence. I can tell you what it feels like to be a junkie despite the fact that I have a completely different set of behaviors to draw on and nothing to reinforce an addictive behavior like that.
You feel confident, nothing really bothers you, but it's a false result of being detached from your pain and all of your emotions, which mean you come off as a stable balanced person. However you have very little empathy and you are truly apathetic. I found it to be an ugly sensation. Disconnected, I didn't care about anything.
When you think about it to be disconnected from pain also means to be disconnected from joy, from people. Next time you are in pain ask yourself how real it is. No sane person has that discussion with someone in pain. Opiates just make the pain and everything else, not real. So I would argue now that pain and joy are more real than materialistic concerns. That the connections in life, pain and joy are perhaps the only real things we have. My experiences with opiates were the more you take the less real you are.
If the DEA would quit practicing medicine without a license it would be a solvable medical problem rather than a legal issue.
True that.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No, it's actually a medical condition. Opiate withdrawal is not just a lack of feeling good. Addiction can happen even when the drugs are taken exactly as prescribed. Sometimes even that significant drawback is justified by the amount of pain the person would otherwise be in.
My brother passed away a couple years ago. He used a lot of pain medicine. I think it contributed. If nothing else it masked the pancreatitis for at least some time. He was on just far too much stuff. It was insane and all of it was legally prescribed. I flushed it all after he passed. It took several flushes.
From everything I've read, he might have lived a far longer life had he smoked pot instead for the pain. Again, not a perfect solution, and you really want to get off them if you possibly can, but the opiods seem a lousy long term solution.
If marijuana really is a better choice and less hazardous than many opiods and such, then we really should get rid of the ridiculous classification. Again, I'm certainly not espousing smoking it recreationally, but if it is the choice between one that will kill you and pot, then pot seems less bad.
Addiction isn't a disease. It is a choice.
Bullcrap. Try to go three days without food. The urge to eat will be overwhelming. Yet a heroin addict will chose heroin over food.
This happened to my buddy. He got in a car accident or something. This was shortly after he graduated from high school, and his father had just died. He ended up on pain meds, ended up getting addicted after a couple of months. When his prescription ran out, he called up our mutual friend who was in to drugs and got more. This went on for about 18 months before he decided he wanted to become a veterinarian, somehow his friends and family weaned him off pills, and after two years was accepted in to vet school. Through no small miracle he made it through grad school and graduated, he's now pretty successful.
I grew up in a pretty rich suburb, we had time to help him and his family through the addiction, and he had a strong goal to strive for. Many people don't have the opportunities or strong safety net that he did.
moox. for a new generation.
I'd say that most everyone, not just teens. This is a real and very significant problem. But some estimates, our country is under attack. So what are we going to do about it? Point the finger of blame? Or defend ourselves? Your choice.
No objective measurements of pain, that is the problem. I've seen people with a simple toothache report their pain a 12 on scale of 10, while those who have tombstone ST segments and in the process of dying from a myocardial infarction say their pain is a zero. It's as if pain is a subjective thing or something. How is a physician to determine just how much a patient is hurting?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
After three days you lose your appetite.
Addiction isn't a disease. It is a choice.
Stop being an idiot. Break your back in two places, go on tramadol for 5+ years along with a muscle relaxant and then come back and tell me how you live your life. Sometimes, addiction isn't just to "feel good" it's also due to circumstances beyond your control. I couldn't live the life I do without pain killers, I'm physically addicted to it. My choices are: No pain killers and live a life of incredible pain, if I didn't decide just to end it all. Or pain killers and being addicted to them until I drop dead.
If you're popping pills to "feel good" you've got a problem. The only difference between a junkie looking for the next hit and me grabbing my next pill is the life we lead.
Om, nomnomnom...
Damn Mr AC, I'm sorry to hear that.
Opiates are a lousy long term solution. Like you're observing life and not really participating, not present.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It sounds like your understanding of brain function is woefully inadequate. Regardless of what you think you think, drugs that mimic brain chemicals (they fit the same molecular key and trigger cerebral physiological functions) will alter your behaviour, completely and totally, from simply dying on the spot as a result of the wrong combination or an excess to altered social interaction to fight or flight to sleeping to waking to everything that goes on in your head. Things that cause susceptibility an addiction of what ever chemical type are considered a disease just like any other genetic condition that is considered a disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Feels good should not even be considered a proper psychological term because it is far more accurate as feels betters or feels worse because it is a relative brain chemical state and some people are simply incapable of certain socially accepted feelings because they can not achieve the brain chemical states naturally ie psychopaths have no real concept of happiness due to genetic disability and are at risk from oxycodone addiction because they lack the ability to produce those chemicals at appropriate levels at appropriate times.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Medical history info, so I'm availing myself of the AC privilege.
While we're on the crusade, let's not forget that these drugs do help a lot of people. Yes, people get hooked and yes people die from their addictions, but there are a lot of people who these drugs help. They're necessary.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I've been through *major* surgeries where morphine, fentanyl, etc. were the only drugs that allowed me to do heroic things like stand under my own power. I've taken enough Norco that my pharmacist drew me aside for a concerned consultation. It's been a few years now, and no, I don't take anything stronger than aspirin or Tylenol when I need it.
But I got to suffer through the shift of Norco into Schedule II after one of my surgeries. It just wasn't convenient for my doctors to prescribe the perfect drug for me so, thanks for the extra pain and suffering, guys.
I'm not trying to minimize that there's a problem. But we have to balance the solution with the real benefit these drugs provide the people who don't get hooked on them.
Opium Dens
It's good that you added that to our water supply instead of taking it back to a pharmacy or a police station for proper disposal.
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Addiction isn't a disease. It is a choice.
I didn't get to choose. I refused the pain medication when I was in hospital, which they entertained at first and then when the pain came on and I was moaning from it the nurse came in with a jab, announced it was time for my drugs and stuck it in my shoulder without even giving me a chance to object - then I was in la la land.
Everyone likes to "feel good". Everyone. But stop being so narcissistic thinking that you have to feel good all the time.
I think you're right, though I would put it down to naivety over narcissism. Worse than that are the people who are so terrified of being alive they have to lie to themselves and everyone else that they're happy. I think those people are susceptible to opiates. You don't feel good though, just detached. It feels wrong to me.
Life isn't supposed to be like that.
Exactly, if you find some meaning in your life then you have a chance to be happy, but there is no guarantee.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The cure for hunger is a dildo up your ass for three days.
Pharmaceutical companies that do this and the doctors who enable them are absolute scum.
Good example of why the private sector needs regulation.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Physical hunger pain stops, but psychological desire to eat doesn't. I once fasted for 5 days to see if I could, and after the 2nd day or so hunger pain stopped, but I dreamed about eating. By the fourth day, I was literally drawing out pictures of the food I wanted to eat.
Life isn't "supposed to be" like anything.
Both of course.
How can you defend yourself if you don't know what is attacking you?
Proper defense necessitates "pointing the finger of blame"...aka identifying the cause of the problem.
Fortunately we already know: Pharmaceutical companies make drugs abusable on purpose and incentivize doctors to prescribe them.
Democrats have been pushing for more pharma regulations for years, Repubicans opposing them.
Republicans have fought over and over to make it easy for these abusable drugs to get FDA approval.
Oxyconin is a perfect example, read up:
"In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5 million in fines"
source
Thank you Dave Raggett
Alcoholic here going AC for this topic.
The only context the word "disease" appears in any of the articles is "Centers for Disease Control".
Personally I don't care if you call it a disease or not. I consider it a disorder but the AMA has considered it a disease since the 1950s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The modern disease theory of alcoholism states that problem drinking is sometimes caused by a disease of the brain, characterized by altered brain structure and function.
The American Medical Association (AMA) declared that alcoholism was an illness in 1956. In 1991, the AMA further endorsed the dual classification of alcoholism by the International Classification of Diseases under both psychiatric and medical sections.
(emphasis mine)
And although you can find sources which argue that addiction is not a disease, you might want to consider this link too:
Why Is Alcoholism Classified As A Mental Illness?
I don't think it's a choice to be an addict, however I do make a choice whether or not to drink every day and on days that I choose not to drink I'm making the choice to be sober multiple times throughout the day.
I'm on my first drink of the day. I'm not doing it to "feel good". I'm doing it to stop shaking. I'm doing it just to feel "normal".
I can't speak for other addicts, but I'm sure I would feel a lot better overall if I did manage to quit completely. I might start feeling "good" after at least 5 drinks - Incidentally 5 drinks is considered binge drinking by many (if not most) medical professionals and is generally taken as a sign of possibly having a problem. Most drinkers I know scoff at the idea that having 5 drinks in one sitting is a problem. I know I won't feel good when I wake up whenever I wake up tomorrow.
And I'm generally depressed, but sometimes I get really depressed and being drunk and really depressed at the same time is definitely not feeling "good". In fact just knowing I get that way sometimes is a big reason I do not own a gun.
I've quit many times and withdrawal really sucks the first few days. That is quite the opposite of "feeling good".
Some recovery groups reject the disease model of addiction because like the First Step in 12 step programs it means we are "powerless" although having a disease doesn't necessarily mean you're powerless, but some people seem to use it as an excuse.
I consider myself fortunate to never have become addicted to opiates. I've never needed them long term, but I really like them. (benzos too). The benzos can really help alcohol withdrawal, but it's my understanding that a full-blown benzo addiction is no picnic either. I've never asked for them, but I've been prescribed them twice for alcohol withdrawals - both times just a week-long supply.
Usually I just go it alone at home. That is not actually recommended as alcohol withdrawal can kill you and there is something called "Kindling". (Don't try this at home.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Kindling due to substance withdrawal refers to the neurological condition which results from repeated withdrawal episodes from sedative–hypnotic drugs such as alcohol or benzodiazepines. Each withdrawal leads to more severe withdrawal symptoms than the previous withdrawal syndrome. Individuals who have had more withdrawal episodes are at an increased risk of very severe withdrawal symptoms, up to and including seizures, and death.
So why do I keep drinking if it's so bad? I can't fully explain it but I have some ideas that I'm not even going to delve into here.
I really don't think I'm "narcissistic" either. I generally have a low self-esteem
IIRC, strong medicines must be in a medicine bottle with the patient's name on it and in the possession of that patient. If the police find a couple of Ritalin or Oxycontin rolling around the car and there isn't a medicine bottle with your name on it, you'll be arrested for transporting drugs.
That might be why such medicines for children are delivered as one dose per day, although I know a parent who crushes 2 tablets and turns it into 3 doses over 48 hours because a daily tablet makes the child very lethargic for the first few hours.
Burroughs mentioned something about the injuries that result from thrashing around on a concrete floor... incarceration in small rooms with concrete floors being a corollary of addiction.
The CIA's gotta do something with all that opium they're farming.
Don't tell anyone else but I poop into your water supply on a daily basis.
None of that makes it a "disease".
I had spinal surgery as well to repair a slipped disc in my lower back (lumbar area? Not sure on the proper English terminology) and was put on Tramadol for the pain after the surgery.
Tramadol was great. It really was. Not only did it take the pain whenever it flared up, it also helped me to think more clearly. Not just my own opinion of it, mind you, but what my family told me. I was easier to be around, pure and simple. And it didn't cloud my mind - in fact I went and took my driver's license while 'high' on painkillers.
The thing is, the pain in my back never went away, so I kept taking Tramadol. Until one Easter I miscalculated how many pills I had left, and with the doctor's office closed I ran out.
It was horrible. Just HORRIBLE. My entire lower back felt like someone was holding a branding iron against it, I was wet with sweat and could barely move for four days. But then it just ... stopped. It went from burning to throbbing to sore to 'acting up' over approximately 24 hours. I could get up from my bed again, could walk around. It was only then, after it was all over, that I realized I'd gone through withdrawal symptoms and the back pain had, for who knows how long, been the body begging for the next fix of painkillers.
Opioid addiction is not something you just notice and realize you have, because the original symptoms STAY. You take the pills because of the pain, so as long as the pain keeps coming back you keep taking the pills. It's not about choice as the GP would like to claim.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
To summarize the post I just wrote a little higher in this thread, I was on Tramadol as well with the same symptoms you describe, but accidentally ran out of pills without being able to get more. It took four-five days to get through a hell of pain and come out on the other side, but other than my back being weaker now than it was and hurting sometimes I am fine. Are you absolutely certain you need the pills still, or are you like me addicted with your body 'faking' pain to get you to take more pills?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
You are at the cutting edge of 1880's psychological and medical practice. Really truly ignorant of science.
Are you absolutely certain you need the pills still, or are you like me addicted with your body 'faking' pain to get you to take more pills?
Absolutely, I broke my C2 and C3. If people have a well of luck, I probably used up all mine since 95% of people don't walk out of those without more severe problems(partial/complete paralysis, lack of the ability to breath, and so on), not counting the multiple years of physio. One of the guys in the physio class I was in, was in a similar spot and broke his C1 and C2 in a car accident. He'd been there 3 years, last I heard he'd gotten to the point where he could run(not well) again but he also takes pain medication. A 100mg/hydromorphone long acting, and then oxycontin for breakthrough pain. Which is pretty good for a guy they considered paralyzed for life with under a 4% of ever walking again.
I've stopped taking them before on multiple occasions at the recommendation of my neurologist. I've got two options with that, keep taking pain pills or they can do a spinal fusion and with luck? It won't paralyze me. Two neurologists and 3 neurologists specialized in spine surgery gave a 60-80% chance of partial mobility or full loss because of the splintering. Techniques get better, but as it stands? Won't risk it right now.
Tramadol isn't fun stuff, though it's nowhere near as bad as some others like hydromorphone(dilaudid). My mom is on that now because of severe nerve damage in her feet and legs, my grandmother and grandfather before for cancer.
Om, nomnomnom...
As someone who lives with extreme chronic pain after 3 failed back surgeries, I wouldn't be able to move as much as I do without pain meds. I use the Fentanyl patch 100 along with percocet 10s for break out pain. I have gone the route of no paid meds after each surgery, the longest was 6 months. Then the pain came back even worse than last time. I have also tried to go without just to see what happens, pain doesn't go away. Over the last 10 years I have been to a ton of doctors, xray, MRIs, CT scans, etc and been on and off pain meds until 5 years ago when the pain wouldn't stop no matter what anyone had me try including PT and chiropractors. I finally retired from IT work after 27 years at the age of 46. There isn't even an official term for my condition other than degenerative disc disease except I had the disc removed at l5s1 after the 3rd surgery. No one can even pin point what the issue is because this started up after a budge disc I had sudden didn't play nice after 20 years of living with it. I fell down a small set of steps when I was 20. I also suffer with restless ligament syndrome, like restless leg but my whole body flops instead of just my leg. Speaking of which I have muscle atrophy in my left calf muscle. Interest point most of my pain is in the right hip and groin area with the rest across my lower back. Most people have pain down their left leg, not me.
I have the some what unique ability go off pain meds with very little withdrawal to no problems even dealing with Oxycotin(sp). If I take too many percocets then the pain actually will increase some times.
The point is right now I would be unable to live a somewhat decent life without pain meds. I would love to be off them completely because I hate them and the side effects. Not everyone can just stop taking them. After spending two years looking for a reduction in pain and meds I'm trying a chronic pain program at the Cleveland Clinic. The Cleveland Clinic is one of the best medical centers in the US along with University Hospital. They are a hugh business in Cleveland and continue to expand at an incredible rate. Not a bad replacement for the old LTV steel mills. I sincerely hope they can work where everyone else has failed but I won't give up pain meds if it's the only way to have a ok life for my family until a cure is found.
>I can tell you what it feels like to be a junkie despite the fact that I have a completely different
Huh? That's a big nope. You were a drug addict. Period. Your doctor was directly responsible for your drug addiction.
I wanted to keep going so much. I wanted to always feel....fine! I was prescribed soooo many more pills than I actually used. Within 72 hours, I'd weaned myself off the pills because I wanted to feel like that all the time. And this was just hydrocodone; not even Oxy!
I still remember those two days, pretty clearly. Still wish I could safely live like that.
So teenagers have the same drug problems as the general population, then?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Addiction isn't a disease. It is a choice.
I didn't get to choose.
You didn't get a choice then - but there is always choice later. Wounds eventually heal, and one may then stop. Not abruptly of course - withdrawal can be nasty. You reduce the dose gradually until you quit from some minimum dose. That way you never get the big withdrawal problems. Any doctor can make such a plan.
The approach people take on addiction has a surprising connection to their political stance. For decades, the right has been approaching addiction as a mental/moral weakness: that those succumbing to addiction are not sick or diseased but mentally weak and need to be punished so that they will correct their behavior. This is the driving force behind the 'war on drugs':
Those on the left have taken more of a medical approach and insisted that addiction is a neurochemical issue which needs to be treated by doctors.
When we actually look at research and data it turns out the truth is slightly more complex than either of these models. Turns out, it's not just about character or chemicals, but the combination of addictive chemicals and the environment the individual is in. Around 20 % of US troops in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. However, upon returning to the States, only about 5 % of them continued using. This by itself has given researchers some insight into key components of addiction and the affect environment has on it. Quoting the link above:
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
There is some basic flaw in an addict. If you tie a man to a tree and force feed him alcohol for months he will go through withdrawal when the alcohol is stopped but he will not be an alcoholic. I feel that addicts have some sort of serious depression that can not be easily seen or dealt with. Depressed people do not always want to get better. They may simply be marking time until death comes to them. Since they do not value anything about themselves they may also not give a hoot about any effects that befall you in relation to their substance abuse. And I will get hate mail for saying this but if a person wants to get high or feel high there is already a serious mental defect at work. They can not even imagine that a person could be really happy and never, ever get any kind of high.
>addicted to alcohol
>not an alcoholic
please stop posting.
You didn't get a choice then - but there is always choice later.
Indeed. However when the doctor does not reduce your dose when you request it and says that you have to stay on these tablets for the next month, then no, you don't have a choice because if you start to withdraw and then the pain is too much you can't start taking them again unless you want to risk a heart attack.
You reduce the dose gradually until you quit from some minimum dose. That way you never get the big withdrawal problems. Any doctor can make such a plan.
This is exactly what we did. It took six agonizing weeks to withdraw to the minimum dose because even the little withdrawal problems are pretty bad. horrible stuff.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Burroughs mentioned something about the injuries that result from thrashing around on a concrete floor... incarceration in small rooms with concrete floors being a corollary of addiction.
If you suddenly withdraw alcohol from an alcoholic, they can die sitting on a sofa, so I suppose it's the sofa that killed them?
Twat.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Kurtis Mayfield's "Pusherman"started playing my head.
> The U.S. consumes about 80 percent of the world's prescription opioid supply.
Yikes. Perhaps that has something to do with the US converting Afghanistan[1] into the hellhole it is nowadays, by first supporting the Mujahhedin with weapons and logistics (because COMMIEZ!), and then renaming them to the Taliban and bombing them (which I'd be OK with) and all the civilists around them (which I'm definitely NOT OK with).
[1] Afghanistan's main export product has once been opium (these days it's more like refugees)
Are you tired of having empty prisons? Do you need something to do since your officers cannot put people in jail for marijuana? Feel like the drug war is a losing battle? Well, welcome to the golden opportunists of opioid abuse incarceration. Just stoke the fires of a long-time medical problem, and instead of offering medical solutions for a medical problem, offer to put people in your jails. As a bonus, everyone is a suspect, and most people feel pain from time to time. Ka-ching! Watch the money start rolling in again. Soon, your officers and police, and lawyers, and judges, and bailsman will be a busy as ever.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
What? If you had actually read my post rthrough you'd have noticed I did no such thing but specifically pointed out that both the left and the right have been by and large wrong in their approach.
The right is wrong in saying it's all about the individual. But the left is also wrong in saying it's nothing but chemicals and can be handled with medicine alone. That was the whole point of my post, and instead of bothering to read it you stopped after 4 sentences just to rave at me for essentially agreeing with you,
Ironically enough, this is just what you yourself did by not reading through the argument that was presented.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
And not just alcohol, Sugar as well...and a host of others.
I'm guy who posted above about living with extreme chronic pain and need to be on Fentanyl patches and percocet for break through pain after 3 fail surgeries.
Not everyone has the same issues as you. I'm not saying that some people don't have the issues of ghost pain from pain meds because it is true. But some people suffer serious real pain as I do. I've been off pain meds several times and it didn't change a thing. There is something wrong with my neurological systems and the doctors have no clue what it is. All I know is that in order to have a reasonably enjoyable life I have to be on pain meds.
For some of us, the dreadful life of pain meds is all we will know until a cure is found.
-GeekPoet
I stopped reading after your post brings in politics and makes the right evil while the left is savior of humanity.
That's exactly what he didn't do, you dumbfuck.
Heroin addict will take heroin over food? Wtf? No, no they won't. Can we please stop it with this Refeer Madness crap. Trust me, opiate withdrawal fucking sucks, but it's not bad enough that someone is going to starve themselves to avoid it. That is unless they have some severe untreated mental illness or chronic pain that the heroin is covering up and they would rather die than suffer another day. Maybe we should cut this puritan 'drugs are bad' crap and let these people have all the oxicodone and hydromorphone that they want and stop making them suffer - fact is opiates are the safest and most effective pain relieving and antipsychotic drugs we know. It is society's retarded desire to push this demand on to the black market that makes them so dangerous, that motivates people to steal, and makes people less productive at life. I would love to see the day where every last heartless, piece of shit drug warrior's head is on a pike.
So sorry that there is another spiny out there, I feel your pain, and actually feel it to this day. I had surgery to repair, and dang it, the surgeon made a little bit of an error, and nicked my nerves, and I am left with a deeper voice (partial vocal cord paralysis) and the feeling of stabbing, burning pain radiating down my arms into my either numb or tingling (like just coming out of being asleep) hands. I was put on fast acting / immediate release pain meds, and yes those can be an issue for people who abuse them, or for people whose pain would be adequately controlled with a lower dose, or a shorter period of dosing... but for me, I never got full relief. So, then I start the prescription train... whoo, whoo.. not. They tried every opiate, non opiate, neuroleptic, NSAID, that there was. Even antidepressants, and all the new drugs. I never had the feelings of apathy or disconnection that you described, even on the highest opiate levels. Part of the reason was that I felt very much connected to the people around me, and the pain I had to endure. I learned by going to a very good pain doctor, that medicine can only take you so far, and the rest you have to do for your self. So, I got on a long acting opiate, with short acting for those special times that exceed my patches coverage. I also went to multiple psychological evaluations and sessions, to learn to deal with pain, and live with pain. The sad fact of my story was that had I not wanted to find alternatives, had I not done my own homework, I would have been stuck on short acting, immediate release, opiates, the kind that most people have problems with. Short acting meds produce that onset of euphoria, and you can sometimes feel the kick when they start working. They also result in quicker dependence and given the right person, addiction. Addiction in my experience has not been an issue, I have had to go through withdrawal, but never went to a street dealer or drug substitute, never doctor shopped, never altered scripts, never went out of my way to use my medication for anything other than the intended purpose, and never more than prescribed. It helps that I truly need pain management to go to work, to function, and to get out of bed. Without it, my life is filled with pain, with medication and the right outlook, you can function without addiction, but nothing can stop the biology of dependence. What doctors need to do, is to just be careful when prescribing, and think about the doses and the length that someone will need to be medicated. One thing I noticed, they are much more likely to prescribe to young kids and older adults. When you are in the middle years, say 19 - 35, they will often cut back on what they prescribe, how much they believe you when you say you are in pain. This is the doctor making assumptions about drug seeking behavior, which they should never do. They should follow the rules, and spend the time, and make informed decisions for the best possible treatment of pain. Untreated, pain can cause more problems than you imagine. Living with high levels of pain not only affects you mentally, draining you, immobilizing you, making you wish you were anywhere but the place of pain you live in, but it also affects you systemically, raising stress related hormone levels, raises blood pressure, altering your movement which causes a cascade of physical problems, and really messes with your bodies natural level of endorphins, and other pain related transmitters. Of course, treatment does have its issues too, but I would rather have a job, a life, and my patch, than the alternative. No one wants to have to take something, the key word there is have to take. I only wish doctors would spend more time explaining how pain affects us, how the drugs affect us, and what alternatives we should try first. Pain management and good pain doctors, not just clinics that try to wean you off opiates, should be mandatory. Most of the pain management clinics I have seen are just suboxone dispensaries, but the few that do the holistic approach to
Wounds eventually heal, and one may then stop. Not abruptly of course - withdrawal can be nasty. You reduce the dose gradually until you quit from some minimum dose. That way you never get the big withdrawal problems. Any doctor can make such a plan.
Have you ever followed that course of action?
Why some people get addicted, and some dont
I'll tell you, I've been on all sorts of opioids over the years, from 12 days on morphine, to 1+ year on vicodin for a chronic wound that wouldn't heal, to the occasional Oxycotin etc (Being sick sucks for you younger folks)
I never got addicted - Lucky I guess. I wonder if it is because I actually HATE the feeling they give me? I like being in control of my life, and hate the feeling of being drunk or high (why I've never done pot etc - I can't understand WHY I would want the feelings that have been described to me)
Someone once told me that "Happy people with something to look forward to tend not to get addicted" - I don't know. I guess it is possible when you are injured, you get depressed, and it takes you away. The addiction epidemic does seem to follow along with lack of hope.
This isn't preaching - I just can't understand it.
I'm not sure if marijuana is a better choice for everyone in every circumstance though.
For hospice care, I wonder if opiates would be better over all.
In my experience having had bone surgery on my arm, I was prescribed morphine for the pain and while morphine was fun and all at the hospital where I had little else to do, when I got home I quickly realised this is crap. The morphine numbs the pain alright but it numbs everything about your humanity in the process. So I smoked marijuana and it didn't do nearly as good a job of numbing the pain from the operation, but it allowed me to focus and concentrate on other things and so the pain ended up being in the background and was about as annoying as the hum of a fridge.
Yes he did, maybe you need to try reading what was posted again. And learn how to express your opinion without the use of swear words and insults.
Kursgesagt has a video I found interesting that touches on some of these things you mentioned.
I had headache for at least a full year, and it is full on, 24/7. Whenever I move my head, it is like someone hit me with a wooden bat. During the time, I only took max strength aspirin, and I don't do that everyday. I go to work, live normal life. So, I think I am kind of qualify (kind of, because I never experience searing pain like back injury).
I'll point it out since you seem to ignore it.
The approach people take on addiction has a surprising connection to their political stance.
" For decades, the right has been approaching addiction as a mental/moral weakness: that those succumbing to addiction are not sick or diseased but mentally weak and need to be punished so that they will correct their behavior. This is the driving force behind the 'war on drugs'"
"Moral weakness" aka religion
"Punishment" bad right for wanting people to take responsibility for their lives.
"War on drugs" blames the right.
"Those on the left have taken more of a medical approach and insisted that addiction is a neurochemical issue which needs to be treated by doctors."
"Taken more of a medical approach" - uses their intelligence to try and solve where right uses religion and makes "war".
"war" Doesn't mention even though left has been just as involved. In fact only shows left in positive light.
Sure go ahead and tell me again how your posting doesn't put the right as having a bad solution while the left is so intelligent in their approach.
What could possibly have been said is all current political attempts at a solution aren't working and maybe a combined solution should be tried. Something like reduce or eliminate the laws against pot and put more funding into neurological research while continuing the fight against drug violence and support foreign governments attempts at stopping production.
-GeekPoet
But the relationship between addiction and depression is a very real one:
https://psychcentral.com/lib/d...
People stay on the most common addictive substances to keep depression at bay.
No, it's actually a medical condition. Opiate withdrawal is not just a lack of feeling good. Addiction can happen even when the drugs are taken exactly as prescribed. Sometimes even that significant drawback is justified by the amount of pain the person would otherwise be in.
If the DEA would quit practicing medicine without a license it would be a solvable medical problem rather than a legal issue.
In my opinion, the DEA is intentionally causing doctors to violate their Hippocratic oaths.
A person's first exposure to opiates *should be* from a doctor! Duh!
It's either that or the streets. If doctors are winning out over the street, then crime is under control.
You are at the cutting edge of 1880's psychological and medical practice. Really truly ignorant of science.
As an alcoholic, people like this made my life hell to find a sensible set of doctors and get treated. Now that I have a doctor, therapist and psych none of who believe this bullshit, I have actually started a workable treatment plan. I've lost over 15% of my body weight in 4 months. I am not dieting from anything but alcohol (and I still drink, this is a reduction plan, not complete abstinence). Of course, this is all impossible, right?
Everyone treats drugs like no big deal. Kids have a fever, drug them up. Got a scratch, put something on it. Take an aspirin. Doctors are expected to give a prescription for anything and everything.
People should suck it up a little.
"This is the driving force behind the 'war on drugs'"
Also, gaining the legal right to steal peoples' stuff without due process.
They found a strong correlation between teens' taking the drugs for medical reasons and then later taking them for "non-medical" reasons, or in other words, abusing them
No, not "in other words". Taking a drug for a non-medical reason does not automatically equate to abuse of said drug. If it did, everyone who has ever had a beer or a cup of coffee should be considered an abuser.
Alcoholic here going AC for this topic.
The only context the word "disease" appears in any of the articles is "Centers for Disease Control".
Personally I don't care if you call it a disease or not. I consider it a disorder but the AMA has considered it a disease since the 1950s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The modern disease theory of alcoholism states that problem drinking is sometimes caused by a disease of the brain, characterized by altered brain structure and function.
The American Medical Association (AMA) declared that alcoholism was an illness in 1956. In 1991, the AMA further endorsed the dual classification of alcoholism by the International Classification of Diseases under both psychiatric and medical sections.
(emphasis mine)
And although you can find sources which argue that addiction is not a disease, you might want to consider this link too:
Why Is Alcoholism Classified As A Mental Illness?
I don't think it's a choice to be an addict, however I do make a choice whether or not to drink every day and on days that I choose not to drink I'm making the choice to be sober multiple times throughout the day.
I'm on my first drink of the day. I'm not doing it to "feel good". I'm doing it to stop shaking. I'm doing it just to feel "normal".
I can't speak for other addicts, but I'm sure I would feel a lot better overall if I did manage to quit completely. I might start feeling "good" after at least 5 drinks - Incidentally 5 drinks is considered binge drinking by many (if not most) medical professionals and is generally taken as a sign of possibly having a problem. Most drinkers I know scoff at the idea that having 5 drinks in one sitting is a problem. I know I won't feel good when I wake up whenever I wake up tomorrow.
And I'm generally depressed, but sometimes I get really depressed and being drunk and really depressed at the same time is definitely not feeling "good". In fact just knowing I get that way sometimes is a big reason I do not own a gun.
I've quit many times and withdrawal really sucks the first few days. That is quite the opposite of "feeling good".
Some recovery groups reject the disease model of addiction because like the First Step in 12 step programs it means we are "powerless" although having a disease doesn't necessarily mean you're powerless, but some people seem to use it as an excuse.
I consider myself fortunate to never have become addicted to opiates. I've never needed them long term, but I really like them. (benzos too). The benzos can really help alcohol withdrawal, but it's my understanding that a full-blown benzo addiction is no picnic either. I've never asked for them, but I've been prescribed them twice for alcohol withdrawals - both times just a week-long supply.
Usually I just go it alone at home. That is not actually recommended as alcohol withdrawal can kill you and there is something called "Kindling". (Don't try this at home.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Kindling due to substance withdrawal refers to the neurological condition which results from repeated withdrawal episodes from sedative–hypnotic drugs such as alcohol or benzodiazepines. Each withdrawal leads to more severe withdrawal symptoms than the previous withdrawal syndrome. Individuals who have had more withdrawal episodes are at an increased risk of very severe withdrawal symptoms, up to and including seizures, and death.
So why do I keep drinking if it's so bad? I can't fully explain it but I have some ideas that I'm not even going to delve into here.
I really don't think I'm "narcissistic" either. I general
of course our current opioid epidemic is due to the huge proliferation of prescription opioid abuse. Its almost like its a bad idea to put everyone on synthetic heroin & should instead just treat whatever condition is causing their chronic pain.
But that would eat into insurance company profits. Its much better for wallstreet if we just turn them into junkies, then they'll lose their job (and their insurance) and become medicaids problem. Sure it ruins lives & the overhead costs to society and the govt are enormous, but the important part is protecting those golden parachutes!
Yesterday, in a medical conference, I was told that 75% of heroin addicts that started with oxycontin abuse never had a prescription for their oxycontin.
Different statistic, but also very different implication. And no I don't have a source to cite, sorry, but I do believe in the sincerity of the speaker, FWIW.
Why hasn't depression and addictiveness been bred out of humans thus far? Could it be that we care about others far too much?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Yes, and the right is also traditionally more religious so these are connected.
The whole point the comment was to highlight that punishing people with jailtime for substance abuse is a non-functioning strategy for getting them to take responsibility for themselves. People use drugs for a variety of reasons, but taking addicts and putting them into what's likely even a worse environment than they're normally in and then releasing them with a criminal record that makes them integrating into society even harder is a sociologically and psychologically ineffective way of getting people out of addiction.
The idea of personal responsibility is not a bad thing at all, but the notion that personal responsibility can be instilled in people via means of imprisonment in this context is, because we know it does not work.
The war on drugs is a right wing idea. Started by Nixon. Objectively speaking it is the right wing in the US that's been promoting this approach throughout the decades and this is just a political fact. The US is far more to the right than other western nations, and the US also jails the most people for non-violent drug offenses.
Even within the US if you look at the states that've been at the forefront of legalizing weed they tend to be states controlled by democrats.
Just as involved? Huh? By what metric? Obama allowed legalization of weed on a state-by-state basis and now Trump and republicans are talking about possibly cracking down on it. I'm not saying there aren't people on the left who have equally backwards ideas of addiction and drugs as on the right, pr that there aren't libertarians on the right who agree that the war on drugs is a fool's errand and should be stopped. But in general terms it's true not just of the US but the world that right wing parties tend to favor jail sentences and other 'tough on crime' measures moreso than the left.
I'm a Finn myself, and from a US perspective we're very far to the left with out policies but our drug policies are not ideal either. We still jail people for it which I deem to be nonsensical and wrong, but the sentences are far lighter than in the US and we have better access to treatment/social programs, as a result of which we have less of a problem with drugs than say, the US.
So again: I'm not saying the left is or has been perfect, but just looking at policies from across the US and the world, the left has a better track record at the moment than the right.To ignore this is to ignore reality and claim that somehow countries outside the US with more left-leaning and liberal policies do not exist, Uruguay is the first country that's legalized the production, sale and use of cannabis entirely, and it did so in 2013 under José Mujica, a leftist president.
There's only really been 1 strategy that's been tried so far and that's essentially prohibition, which we should know by now is ineffective. It was ineffective for alcohol, and stats-wise it's just as if not more ineffective with other intoxicants.
Yes.
No. This is where it goes wrong. The only permanently effective way to combat drug violence and
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
I second this. I've fasted for 5 days, and around day 2 I also stopped being hungry. I didn't draw food or dream about it, but I will add that on the day that I knew I was going to eat, about 3 hours before dinner, I became ravenous again.
It's ironic that we create perfectly good drinking water only to shit in it...
As a civil engineer (albeit not a wastewater one), I was thinking about this issue too. On one hand, flushing unused medicine does add to the downstream contamination. But on the other hand, even if it were used it (or its metabolites, which might be equally bad) would still end up being flushed anyway. And even then, medicines aren't the only (or even the largest) problem: there's also pesticides, detergents, etc. to deal with. this study (which, it should be noted, measured streams as opposed to treatment plant outflow, which means some pollution sources were untreated runoff) has this to say:
IMO, the only complete solution would be to change the treatment criteria on its head: currently, we only even consider treating for substances that are proven to be harmful (i.e. default-allow with a blacklist, to use a computer firewall analogy). Instead, we should switch to a default-deny policy and use better wastewater treatment techniques to remove all non-H2O chemicals from the water. The trouble is, it would be a lot more expensive.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I'm going to agree with GeekPoet AC.
Your postings are just poorly masked "if you disagree with me you are an evil bigot".
Its people like you that prevent real progress from happening because it is more important to you to be liberal than to actually help people. That ends up with hundreds of people being killed in Chicago violence every year and nothing done because Chicago is already "liberal" and "doing the right thing". So you just let mass murder continue because liberalism is FAR more important than actually helping anyone.
For the past several years I've been seeing lots of stories about how our government wants to "cut off" people from accessing this medication. Yes, there have been deaths. Perhaps access to the drug makes it easier for chronic pain sufferers to commit suicide... People like me who are not addicted will suffer more if this drug becomes unavailable.
If our government wants to tackle unauthorized use of opioids, perhaps they should try to figure out why Heroin use has skyrocketed. It may have something to do with post-war Afghanistan.
Check out 'covert narcissism', might help.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Depressed people don't like to feel good.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Thank you Kiuas , that was one of the most eye-opening reads I have had in a long long time.
This type of insight into behavior is can be very useful in every day life.
Yea... guess what pharmacies and police stations do?
They read the disposal instructions for the drug, which is almost always "Mix with water and flush down the drain."
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have always felt that pain killers should be used sparingly and that one should only take the minimum level necessary to make the pain tolerable.
For me, it wasn't about avoiding addiction. I don't like the feeling of having my mind feel cloudy.
When I had my wisdom teeth removed, the doctor gave me a prescription for Lortab. I declined to fill it. I said that if Tylenol or Aleve made it tolerable, that's what I would use. Even though I had already made my decision, when a friend offered to buy them from me, I was even more certain that I made the right choice.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You feel confident, nothing really bothers you, but it's a false result of being detached from your pain and all of your emotions, which mean you come off as a stable balanced person. However you have very little empathy and you are truly apathetic. I found it to be an ugly sensation. Disconnected, I didn't care about anything.
Hmmm. Sounds like Donald.
Did you get the urge to tweet every inane thought in your head, like a little sixteen year old girl?
You sound like a man of experience.
I stopped reading after your post brings in politics and makes the right evil while the left is savior of humanity.
All he said was that the right sees it as a mental weakness and the left sees it as a disease.
That the takeaway is that the right is evil and the left is the savior of humanity, well that's just a bonus, now isn't it? I wish slack-jawed, yokel, conservatives would think about why people see it that way.
The left has a whole bunch of education and science to support their view, but I guess that's no match against a defense of "Nuh uhhh".
DT is not in itself fatal, it's a symptom of a seizure or other brain function failure. It's the failure of brain function that kills, which was brought on from the alcohol withdrawal. Alcohol withdrawal brings seizures, then come the tremors (DTs), and if they continue to worsen then comes breathing difficulty and/or heart beat irregularity. If these seizures are not treated then there can be loss of oxygen to the brain, and then death.
My understanding is that withdrawal from a dependent drug is rarely fatal, alcohol is one exception.
To me tramadol is the worst for pain. I had taken every NSAID in the book (quite literally, I had a physician look in his book of pain meds after I complained of adverse affects from everything else they gave me) before I was finally prescribed tramadol. Tramadol diminished my pain enough that I felt I could finally get some sleep, but sleep never came. It turns out that something like 1% of the population can see sleep disorders from tramadol use.
For most people the brain function side effects of tramadol are mild. But I'm the 1% where it's less than mild. Wasn't being one of the 1% supposed to be a good thing?
When I complained about this with a physician that I don't normally see she made a note which effectively accused me of lying. When my regular physician saw this she thought the other doctor was an idiot. After that I was prescribed Lortab and for the first time in a long time I could function normally.
Tramadol messes with my head but I'll still take it once in a while if I hurt enough. Getting a proper opiate is difficult and I was prescribed a lot of tramadol, a three month supply at what would now be considered a dangerous dosage. I keep it around for when the pain is bad enough that being unable to sleep for a day or two doesn't sound so bad. These side effects aren't as bad as they were at first, mostly because I know better about what dosage to take and because I'll take it with codeine or hydrocodone which seems to moderate the side effects.
I've seen people sing the praises of tramadol but I can only take it when all other options fail.
Addiction can happen even when the drugs are taken exactly as prescribed.
Yes, and it's quite common for physicians to prescribe drugs improperly. For example, giving people benzodiazepines for longer than two to four weeks, or for non-FDA approved off-label use.
I have also heard horror stories about patients who do develop addictions being cut-off cold turkey when they inform their physician and not being allowed to taper properly. To make matters worse sometimes physicians dismiss withdrawal symptoms from drugs as not being due to the drug, but because of the condition or disease the person supposedly has.
Nice. I had the exact same experience. The withdrawal was re-manufacturing the pain/complaint. Very interesting.
Bullcrap. Try to go three days without food. The urge to eat will be overwhelming. Yet a heroin addict will chose heroin over food.
That's because opiate withdrawal is extremely painful (from what I've heard), you alter your brain over time and when you stop taking the opiate your pain receptors go crazy. As soon as someone in opiate withdrawal takes another dose all of that pain immediately vanishes. I have known a few addicts, they use so they don't get sick, they don't really get high like a new user would.
fact is opiates are the safest and most effective pain relieving and antipsychotic drugs we know. It is society's retarded desire to push this demand on to the black market that makes them so dangerous
The safety profile really should be emphasized. Too many people think it's the drug itself that is so dangerous when in fact the danger is due to having to purchase on the black market where you don't know the potency, don't know if it's the drug you want (lots of people substitute fentanyl these days) and don't know if it's been adulterated. If people could just buy some dope at the local pharmacy we wouldn't have as many dying from it, although people do still manage to overdose on pharmaceuticals like Oxycontin.
Prescribing off-label is not necessarily a problem. The FDA is not the end-all of drug uses. However, it is wrong and even dangerous to simply cut a patient off rather than tapering them down. Some of that though is caused by fears of the DEA. Some is just not good practice.
Some people are simply between a rock and a hard place when it comes to pain and pain relief. Trying to walk the thin line between tolerable pain and tolerable side effects is more art than science. Sometimes, even the best answer isn't a GOOD answer, it's just least bad.
And I truly feel for you.
I get the impression you mistake my post for essentially saying "Man up and get off the meds, I did and it worked out well!" All I wanted to point out was that sometimes, from personal experience, it's just a few days of utter and complete pain hell to get out on the other side. I had no one who told me that.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I don't think it's a choice to be an addict
I thought that was a requirement for being an addict? Trying to quit and being unable to do so. If you use compulsively, but are able to quit, then you're not an addict.
Um... how can this be true:
"Most American teenagers who abuse opioid drugs first received the drugs from a doctor,... and the majority of them had been prescribed opioids previously, the researchers found"
and later the pediatric report said:
"of all 188,468 prescription opioid exposures reported for youth under 20, [most] occurred among children under 5, [who got] the medication because it was improperly stored or was in a purse".
Has anyone else noticed the increase in bogus new releases, that don't jive with established facts. The above says most teen abusers got them for medical reasons from a doctor -- AND the 2nd part says most (60%) were under 5 and *took* (stole) them from someone else who was taking the medicine.
You can't claim most abusers are getting them for medical reasons and then claim that 60% are stealing them.
It is true that an adequate environment and rewarding life helps to break the addiction cycle, but that doesn't mean there is no medical aspect to addiction.
you can take them for non-medical reasons without abuse. Like drinking an 8 oz coca-cola with dinner, and not abusing three 2 liters instead.
I kinda finally recovered from 2 years of pain and medication. My painful friend, I hope you have a decent day and an entire good night of sleep.
Just say no !
I've seen people sing the praises of tramadol but I can only take it when all other options fail.
It's one of those very weird drugs that has a lot of swing compared to other painkillers without a doubt. Two people I bump into occasionally at the local pain clinic have real problems with it, one of them takes 20mg/night for zolpidem to get them to sleep. Even then they only manage 5-7hrs, it's one of those drugs that wouldn't surprise me a decade from now where there's a class-action lawsuit over.
Om, nomnomnom...
Nope, didn't sound like that to me at all so no worries. Rather your personal experience with tramadol and pain killers. I mentioned to a AC that a couple of people I've run into at the local pain clinic has serious problems with the stuff, one takes 20mg of zolpidem so they can sleep because tramadol keeps them awake until their body hit's that magical exhaustion point(usually 4 days or so). The thing is doctors expect people to not abuse drugs, it's not that simple of course. A lot of problems with things like this could probably be fixed if people knew how easy it is to get addicted to them, how bad it can be when you come off of them too.
Om, nomnomnom...
Same AC here and that is an interesting idea I had not heard before.
First link I found:
http://www1.appstate.edu/~hill...
Some of that describes me well, but not all of it.
https://www.psychologytoday.co...
Okay, I plead guilty to some but not all of those things. Some of the signs I'll have to recuse myself from making a judgement on (too subjective, possibly too self-absorbed)
But the left is also wrong in saying it's nothing but chemicals and can be handled with medicine alone.
Disease metaphor is rather useful here. A lot of those can't be cured, only managed. For example, a person can have asthma and not even know about it, if they live in an environment which lacks the triggers, like pollution, allergens or humidity. If changing an environment is not an option, medication is.
Perhaps I am reading different liberal media, but I haven't seen a viewpoint that treats addiction as easely solvable by medication first and only. Can you point out your sources? I really would like to see them.
Back when I was having serious pain issues, m MD prescribed me Tramadol. You know what it did? NOTHING that I could tell anyway. Had no effect on me
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
The late 1980s and early 1990s was a time of huge scare campaigns over pain medications and the rise of Oxycontin becoming a drug problem. Suddenly, it was almost impossible to get a prescription for pain medication. People in a cast with a broken leg were given Tylenol for the pain. In some states they were flagging physicians for a review board if they wrote more than six prescriptions for pain killers a month. By the end of their time slice, 2013, some sanity had come back into the attitudes on pain medications.
Regrettably, the scare tactics of the cited article is trying to bring back the bugaboo of prescription pain killers. Shoot, today many employers refuse to allow workers to work if they are taking Tramodol. Tramodol is a synthetic developed to have the pain relief for arthritis like codeine while being unable to get high and without the side effects of drowsiness codeine causes. But, being an "opiate agonizer" has that nasty opiate word in it and you are considered unsafe to work while taking such a prescription.
Opiates feel nice to many. After surgery or extreme trauma nothing works as well as the opiates for pain relief. Opiates can be abused. Opiates come from a plant you can grow and there is a gigantic black market for them. But you bloody well can't equate getting a prescription for opiates after a broken leg, surgery, tooth removal, etc. with becoming dependent on a chemical high and ending up a heroine addict.
NRRPT/RCT
Addiction is not a choice, by definition.
The difference between an addiction and a simple habit is that you can't overcome the former without some kind of treatment. Maybe putting yourself in that mess was originally a choice but staying an addict isn't.