“Like opioids are OK for ME but that weak willed people turn into addicts.”
Here’s some information on chronic pain, including the percentage of users who become addicts:
“Opioids are hard to kick.”
Maybe so, but I still don’t think, especially with pain management patients strictly monitored, patients with chronic pain conditions should be deprived of them as an option.
Addiction is a disease.
Addiction is a complicated subject - and one that most people who haven’t been affected by it, directly or indirectly don’t understand.
To begin with, there are two distinct but inter-related phenomenon that are both referred to as “addiction” - physical dependency, and the disease of addiction.
Physical dependency occurs when prolonged exposure to a drug changes your physiology to the point where biologically, your body needs that drug for equilibrium - to feel normal.
Opiates, nicotine, alcohol, and benzodiazapines are all examples of drugs that cause physical dependency. Cocaine, crack, marijuana, extasy, etc are not.
It’s still up to the patient how to treat it, & the rest of society shouldn’t be stripped of their options for pain management because of them.
Ultimately it’s the addict who must make the choice to use or stay clean, & I’m failing to see how blaming a third party—even the disease of addiction—helps any of them.
On the other hand, people can get addicted to anything at all - anything that provides a dopamine rush. That’s the mental part, rather than the physical part.
Opiates are particularly dangerous because they check both boxes hard - an incredibly strong physical dependency, as well as an enormously strong dopamine rush. On top of that, eventually it doesn’t work, and then you have to up the dosage.
There is a tendency - particularly among people who’ve never experienced addiction (and those who want access to opiates) - to blame the addict and paint it as a moral failure, or a lack of self-control. “If they just follow the prescription, it’s fine!”
But that’s not how it works. First of all, who wrote the prescription? I know people prescribed 160 mgs of Oxy a day - that’s enough to kill most people. Doctors aren’t infallible.
When we get into the concept of “chronic pain”, things get even more complicated. It becomes a choice - suffer from pain, or take ever-increasing doses of opiates for the rest of your life. Pain can’t kill you, but opiates sure can.
What’s the difference between someone taking 160 MG of Oxycontin every day for “pain”, and a heroin addict shooting up every day to not go into withdrawal?
Other than a doctor said ok?
Structured rehab is the best way to get clean. AA and NA are more about staying clean.
They’re support groups - no more, no less. But when you’re trying to stay clean, support goes a long way.
Hey… at least the Sacklers get to continue being Billionaires
They give it to people without a prescription?
I have concerns about this as well. I was legitimately in pain, but was treated like a junkie.
I think the fundamental problem is that we can’t qualitatively judge pain, let alone accurately predict who will become addicted.
I agree that non-addicts should not have their options stripped because of the opioid epidemic.
The only way to measure pain is comparatively - 1 to 10, where 1 is normal and 10 is the worst pain you’ve ever experienced - and even that is only true for that individual.
Layer people lie on top of that.
Well, that’s the thing about addiction. You don’t know until you try to stop.
Yes, it is self reporting, which is entirely subjective.
I was on a morphine drip every 20 minutes for 41 days in the hospital once. The morning after my discharge, I realized I was in for a rough 9 days.
Yeah, I can’t imagine that was fun.
Yowza. I would have been hooked, for sure.
I don’t know what I would’ve done at the time if I had an opiate plug. Never having been hooked on a drug habit is probably why I was able to claw my way into this decent middle-aged existence.
I was on dilaudid for 5 days and I had a rough 20 days after that.
Honest question - and you don’t have to answer.
On day 2 or 3, when things were worst, what would you have said if someone you know just offered you some heroin?
