I have a couple of friends who are dealing with chronic pain. One is awaiting surgery to hopefully fix the issue. The other is sort of screwed in that regard. The sources of the pain, the maladies, if you will, are different.
What is really inane is that neither one can get adequate pain relief or effective sleep aids. The doctors are all too terrified to prescribe anything that works. And when they prescribe something that might work, the insurance companies and pharmacists substitute those drugs with generics that, for all of their effectiveness, might as well be made of compressed Chinese drywall.
One of the sufferers said as much as that they ought to give the druggies pez-dispensers of whatever they need and let them die, instead of making patients suffer the way that our medical professionals are content to have them suffer.
45 or so years into the "War on Drugs"... it's time to start thinking of solutions other than "lock them all up". The street drugs appear to be more potent and cheaper than they were back in the day.
Needs More Rotation Notation
34 minutes ago
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Even my Pharmacy gets into the act. "Oh No, I can't fill that today"?
OK it is due Sunday, the day was Saturday and I have a refill allowed, and they won't fill it till next week?
My pain is between Me and My Doctor,end of discussion. I don't need anyone else worrying that I might abuse my medicine.
It's not like I am taking "Morphine" but a mild codeine and tylenol tablet. The worriers bug me to no end.
w3ski
Cannabinoids. Smoke pot. I use oils to manage my pain, though if you are not into smoke or vapors the edibles are just as effective.
Hint to states not yet legalized: do you want to turn out the vote?
Things have really changed in that regard. When I was in acute rehab for my stroke in 2008, they handed opiates out like candy. First thing in the morning, last thing before sleep: "Describe your pain as a number between 1 and 10" and then the appropriate pills were dispensed. "Those Vicodin not doing it for you? Here, try some of this morphine sulfate."
I remember thinking at the time that I was really glad I wasn't in any pain, because I was gonna have more than enough challenges when I got home without an addiction to manage. And when I was discharged, the pharmacist threw a bottle of Vicodin in with my other meds just for good measure, I guess. I mostly gave them away to friends who needed them, but I kept three or four in case of tooth pain, as I had no access to a dentist, and one of those can make the difference between being able to sleep and lying awake hurting. I still have a couple of them stashed away for that purpose.
I guess now that a bunch of white people are dying from opioid OD's, they feel like they have to "crack down" on them, but they aren't recognizing the fact that their "cracking down" has never worked to reduce the illicit use of drugs.
Hunter S. Thompson once pointed out in a column that every regime that came to power in China for more than a thousand years has sworn they would crush the opium trade, yet the price of opium on the street of Singapore is roughly the same as it was in 900 BC.
Perhaps we will try something that actually works instead some day, like Portugal has, but until we decouple the idea of decriminalization with the political charge of being "soft on crime" I don't see much hope for progress.
-Doug in Oakland
I had a same-day surgical procedure in `96. They gave me 50 percocets. I used them for things such as bad backaches and such for eight years.
Kaiser still has the 1-10 scale, and tries to manage paid for patients. I was on morphine in the hospital, and it barely barely enough to let me sit up. Toradol sent almost all the pain away, but it lasted an hour, it doesn't come in pill form, and they only used it reluctantly.
They sent me home with Norco and stool softener, which signaled me to use it only when going to sleep at night.
I am fortunate the hospital stay wasn't very long, I did not want to get addicted.
It's all good now, but it's part of why I pay extra for the provider of my choice.
They try to manage pain, obviously. Is Freudian slip a real thing?
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