Side note update for you, thanks to the Sacklers and the hell on earth they visited on us via profiteering lying about the opiates they invented, now there’s actually a gigantic back swing and it’s WAY more difficult to be prescribed strong pain relief, even when badly needed. Count on us to always come up with the worst possible response to a problem, I guess.
It gets worse. There was nothing done for the people whose doctors told them these drugs were safe and non addicting and totally fine to take for their ankle sprain or whatever (slight exaggeration, maybe, but truly slight).
They experienced the same sudden guillotine chop of subscription willingness with no support, mid-addiction.
So yeah all those people the Sacklers got rich by lying to and addicting, they’re just dead now or homeless and on their way there. Damn near to a rule, cuz opiate addiction often can’t be beat at all, and almost never without real support.
It’s grim. But the dead and ruined, their voices don’t rise to anywhere that people with decision-making power can hear. And that’s how our country works, in a nutshell - if you mistreat people a bit, they complain. If you mistreat people all the way, though, they die and go otherwise silent. Forget leopards and their face buffet, we live in a full-on meat grinder.
I mean, that’s pretty similar to how it already operated in Australia. I’ve been prescribed oxycodone only as a post-operative painkiller (dry socket after wisdom tooth removal and sinus surgery) and was given fentanyl immediately post-surgery for my sinus surgery, but since they moved codeine from being behind-the-counter to prescription-only (2018), those are the only times I’ve ever been able to access opiates/opioids in my life, despite presenting with debilitating migraines since I was 11 years old.
At my age, with the knowledge I have now, would I want them for migraines? Hell, no. I don’t want to risk addiction for temporary pain relief. Would I willingly prevent people who experience chronic pain from opiates or opioids? Probably not, but I’m not a doctor.
As is often the case in the US, without someone chiming in with a bunch of specifics, it’s hard to understand the scope of what I mean as being as dark as it is. We institutionally went from “no pain is allowed in patients, load em up!” to “patients can fucking deal with it, it probably doesn’t even hurt that much”, overnight, we didn’t land at any semblance of a sane middle ground. Hopefully the pendulum swings will behave like a real pendulum and settle lower and lower, but woof, it’s bad out there.
Side note update for you, thanks to the Sacklers and the hell on earth they visited on us via profiteering lying about the opiates they invented, now there’s actually a gigantic back swing and it’s WAY more difficult to be prescribed strong pain relief, even when badly needed. Count on us to always come up with the worst possible response to a problem, I guess.
Fucking hell, that’s brutal.
It gets worse. There was nothing done for the people whose doctors told them these drugs were safe and non addicting and totally fine to take for their ankle sprain or whatever (slight exaggeration, maybe, but truly slight).
They experienced the same sudden guillotine chop of subscription willingness with no support, mid-addiction.
So yeah all those people the Sacklers got rich by lying to and addicting, they’re just dead now or homeless and on their way there. Damn near to a rule, cuz opiate addiction often can’t be beat at all, and almost never without real support.
It’s grim. But the dead and ruined, their voices don’t rise to anywhere that people with decision-making power can hear. And that’s how our country works, in a nutshell - if you mistreat people a bit, they complain. If you mistreat people all the way, though, they die and go otherwise silent. Forget leopards and their face buffet, we live in a full-on meat grinder.
I mean, that’s pretty similar to how it already operated in Australia. I’ve been prescribed oxycodone only as a post-operative painkiller (dry socket after wisdom tooth removal and sinus surgery) and was given fentanyl immediately post-surgery for my sinus surgery, but since they moved codeine from being behind-the-counter to prescription-only (2018), those are the only times I’ve ever been able to access opiates/opioids in my life, despite presenting with debilitating migraines since I was 11 years old.
At my age, with the knowledge I have now, would I want them for migraines? Hell, no. I don’t want to risk addiction for temporary pain relief. Would I willingly prevent people who experience chronic pain from opiates or opioids? Probably not, but I’m not a doctor.
As is often the case in the US, without someone chiming in with a bunch of specifics, it’s hard to understand the scope of what I mean as being as dark as it is. We institutionally went from “no pain is allowed in patients, load em up!” to “patients can fucking deal with it, it probably doesn’t even hurt that much”, overnight, we didn’t land at any semblance of a sane middle ground. Hopefully the pendulum swings will behave like a real pendulum and settle lower and lower, but woof, it’s bad out there.