Faced with a growing nationwide opioid addiction, health and consumer advocates say it's time to identify and sever ties with the culprits behind the scourge—pain medication manufacturers and the companies who promote their products.
I’m 64, through bad gene’s and a hard life my back is shot. From top to bottom. I have been addicted to oxycodone for over 4 years now. I am very careful about how and when I use it but I know I’m addicted. The problem is, I literally cannot move without it. The next step for me, they say, is to get injections into my spine. I have yet to know just what they want to pump into me. Now I’m faced with one of those “mixing pharm co’s” and a deeper addiction??? Street drugs led you to the gutter or the morgue so I live with pain, on a heating pad, a frozen gel pack or a hot tub of water. I don’t blame big pharma or my doc’s, I have only my self to blame, thinking I was Superman was I was but a young lad. Now if only these “health advocates” had an answer or replacement to my drug of choice.
As a rule, anytime government becomes involved in patient treatment plans, the patient suffers the most, although I’ll not deny Big Pharma as a whole are a pack of unethical money grubbing chunks of pond scum who care more about their bottom line than anyone’s health, both physical and mental. I also don’t deny many suffer from the ravages of addiction and need help, not prison and any meaningful way of helping such suffering should be done. Just not at the expense of actual patients who suffer daily from chronic and severe pain issues. No matter what government does, 10% of the population will remain addicts and no war on drugs will ever change this. Just ask the folks at LEAP. that’s www.leap.cc which stands for: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. As it’s figures prove, law enforcement does nothing to stem the tide of drug abusers and the percentage of the addicted population is the same now as it was in 1900 when most drugs were legal
I wish I had an answer to the drug problem people have, but government interference between doctor and patient can’t be a solution. It’s already so difficult for pain suffers to obtain pain meds many suffer until they can’t stand it any longer and take their own lives after years of depression and that’s unacceptable to me. Any more regulations and pain docs are going to stop being ones and many already have quit, which leaves a real gap in the legitimate treatment of chronic pain suffers. I hope such lack of treatment doesn’t happen in your area.
I wish you all the best onedman and hope you remain able to find what treatment works for you.
Try looking up integrated medicine on the internet. If I am not mistaken it means being open-minded about both legal prescription drugs and such alternatives as herbs, and nutritional supplements, and chiropractors, and whatever else there is out there. I wish you well in seeking someone both licensed to practice and familiar enough with alternatives to be open-minded about both legal prescription drugs and alternatives, most of which are actually over the counter rather than illegal. Swanson Health Care has pretty good prices, but is often meager about telling you much of anything about their products. You may need to look up by name various herbs and formerly prescription but now generic drugs with expired patents to get information about what is available.
Plan D was/is a never ending “wet dream” for Big Pharma in that through its lobbying of Congressional Whores, Plan D legislation prevents Medicare from bargaining over drug prices that the Veteran’Administration has the authority to do.
You are not addicted, you are dependent, and there is a difference. Hardly any sense talking to anyone, they don’t get it.
The deadliest addiction
Is to profit
GOSH, Thank you to all that wrote a reply…I cannot spell so beware…I can’t go to a back-cracker because of the type of mess I’m in “They” say I’ll end up paralized…herbals that I can register for here in AZ are expensive but do work, the downsides are a smoke filled room and again the expenses, so I let my licence expire…and yes I may be classified as dependant instead of addicted by some but the withdrawal is not something I want to experience again, tried it, horrible horrors…morphine in it’s many forms works, ask any medic in a war zone but heroin? just not for me and “they say” the upgrade is what the problem is, you get use to one level and wanna jump higher, Danny O’Keefe says it best with “7 minutes in heaven for a life time in hell”. The answer is…you muck through as best you can and blame no one. Hillbilly Heroin as it’s known in Kaintuckie is just fine…I just grow weary of it…once again, thank you-one and all for your replies, I just needed to bitch a bit, thanks for letting me.
This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.
There is no epidemic of opioid abuse in the U.S… It just another drug scare. Millions of people take these medications everyday for chronic and debilitating pain, including cancer pain.
People who abuse the medications by crushing, snorting or injecting them have made a choice to get a cheap high. I couldn’t care less.
The drug companies are not to blame for the misuse of their products. No drug company told anyone to snort, inject or crush the pills to get high.
About 16,000 people a year die each year through their own stupidity abusing opioid drugs. There is nary a word about the damage caused by NSAIDS, which kill over 10,000 people a year in the U.S. Nobody taking NSAIDS takes them to get high.
Addicts will always get their fix. I am against more and more repressive that make it harder and harder for sick people to access certain medications that they need.
Stop blaming Big Pharma for thrill seeking drug users who want to get high. Think about the people who are debilitated by pain each and every day and need relief so that their quality of life improves.
Cannabis has been used medicinally and for pain relief for thousands of years. Big Pharma lobbies to keep it illegal to protect the profits it gleans from selling its synthetic medicines at highly inflated prices.
Pain Killer business is a Mess. Based on life style choices due to how the business run, people get hurt and have to depend on pain killers because there is no other solutions for many people…like back problems, flat feet, broken knee and so on…the problem is it is really a mess in the drug management and government says you can not take more than what is necessary and hence over time, people have to supplement from outside sources.
Also every month, people have to see the doctor to get the medication but the drug store may not have it for 2 to 5 days. The whole issue need to be gone though for first why people need it due to how people live and what happens rather that cutting it off legally so that people have to find illegal means…
It is time to fix this…
Lack of restraint upon capitalism is the disease and people are seeking to medicate with opioids to lessen the stress and that level of stress has a huge impact upon the amount of pain suffered from debilitating injuries or illnesses. Stress will reduce the release of natural pain relievers and the opioids do the same, making the situation far worse. This is what is being actively exploited by pharmaceuticals to generate greater profits and done with full knowledge.
I agree with Maryann26. Our doctors are very careful to not over prescribe opioids. We patients must have some demonstrable condition that causes pain, have tried therapy, non-opioid medications, before being prescribed. We must sign a pain agreement about not misusing or sharing the medication. We are subject to drug screenings on occasion. Our prescriptions are for no more than a one month’s supply and they cannot be called in to a pharmacy. They must be picked up at the
Doctor’s clinic. It makes more work for their staff to put the prescriptions into an envelope and have to open a locked drawer and be interrupted many times a day by patients coming to pick up their prescriptions.
Here in New Hampshire the drug addiction crisis is now heroin. Opiods are too hard to get. The campaign to eliminate opioids makes people with legitimate need for them, feel embarrassed and apprehensive about getting their legitimate pain medication.
Once again the danger of moralists arises. We have an again population and many suffer from chronic pain for a variety of reasons. Opiates may be addicting but they are not harmful and do a great job of relieving pain. Better to live a long life addicted to paid medication than to suffer from the lack of it. Opiate addiction is also treatable and safe to come off of in spite of withdrawls – unlike many other pharmaceuticals like barbiturates or diazapines. The campaign against opiate addiction puts physicians in fear of prescribing them and drive those suffering chronic pain to deadly unregulated illegal versions. If anything we need to see a restoration of having Paregoric in drug stores, to see opiates as legal and available over the counter and to fund addition services.
In states with legal cannabis, there has been a significant decline in over-dose deaths…
http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs12/Abrams3.htm
/s
I can’t know about your specific case, but maybe it’s not you who’s to blame. I also had back problems, severe enough to be crawling around on my hands and knees. In time, I discovered they were caused by all the mercury in my fillings and vaccines. It’s been years of work, using nutrition, heavy-metal detoxification and yoga, but the pain is gone - along with many other problems. We have all got to look beyond this commercial pseudo-medical system for answers to our health. Even if it’s not oxycodone, their model is: don’t solve anything, just keep them coming back for more. If the “treatment” causes more problems which leads to them coming back for even more, well, what’s to be done? After all, we’re still making money.
“Being licensed to practice” is actually the problem. What we have is a state-supported medical monopoly. These medical doctors, whose undergraduate degrees are in some liberal arts field (preferred by medical schools, probably because they figure liberal arts majors will have better bedside manner) and who then go to medical school, which is more like a trade school where they memorize some books written by pharma, after which they follow around their resident and mimic what s/he does, are nothing but the sales team of pharma. And as for these “Integrative Medicine” MD’s they are nothing but the liberals of medicine. Real solutions will only be found by taking health into our own hands.
I agree. The cocaine dealer isn’t at fault for the addicts who just want a cheap high. All the dealer’s trying to do is help people living quiet lives of desperation and privation. S/He can’t be blamed for the misuse of their products.
By the way, I wonder where Maryann0 through 25 are?
I see this as quite a one-sided answer. People are leading desperate lives. Until we deal with that problem, making this stuff freely available is going to do nothing but give drug pushers a chance to profit. Do I want some centralized state linking arms with a medical system to create a monopoly that works in the interests of that commercialized pseudo-medicine, all the while claiming it’s in our interests? Certainly not, but to back out of the trap we’re in we have to take back control for ourselves so that as a community we can have meaningful lives, and part of what that will mean is putting checks on profiteers.
