Brad, I have read about twenty of the first few lines, but I have to complicate the story of big pharma and Purdue Pharma as the big bad guys! There were other players in official roles,such as, if I’m not mistaken the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals, who introduced a pain scale for patient reporting. As a consequence of fearing themselves or their institutions being downgraded, physicians prescribed freely. I do agree that Purdue put an unconscionably heavy hand on the scales with their scantily supported claim that their powerful painkiller was miraculously non-addictive.
To me, the greater scandal is that somehow we abandoned our brothers and sisters from productive work to the need for such pain relief.
There are other conditions that mimic addiction; chief among those are eating disorders. They are as difficult to shake as drug addiction, and multiple rounds of therapy/rehab are typically required.
A complication of rehabilitation is monitoring of individual physicians' prescriptions by DEA. Every month is assumed to have thirty days except February, which is recognized as having 28. All other months are counted as thirty days each, and prescriptions are written on a 'months' basis. This leaves the patient with the problem of prescriptions expiring on weekends with no authority to refill a needed prescription.
Opiates and opioids have other uses, especially in controlling liquid output from the GI tract. A year ago I contacted my daughter's pain management physician to sort out how to get her through a long weekend without access to tincture of opium, which is primarily used to control diarrhea. My daughter had an ileostomy and would lose electrolytes and face the danger of dehydration. We worked out a formula to take a ten percent reduction in each dose of the opium and compensate with a few mg of an oxycodone prescription I had left over. No one made a record of the discussion, which was illegal.
Brad, I have read about twenty of the first few lines, but I have to complicate the story of big pharma and Purdue Pharma as the big bad guys! There were other players in official roles,such as, if I’m not mistaken the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals, who introduced a pain scale for patient reporting. As a consequence of fearing themselves or their institutions being downgraded, physicians prescribed freely. I do agree that Purdue put an unconscionably heavy hand on the scales with their scantily supported claim that their powerful painkiller was miraculously non-addictive.
To me, the greater scandal is that somehow we abandoned our brothers and sisters from productive work to the need for such pain relief.
You're right, I do only offer an oversimplified take.
I have often told my dear husband that “you are right” is one of my favorite lines to hear—or read!
Haha!
Keep that in mind for future reference!
There are other conditions that mimic addiction; chief among those are eating disorders. They are as difficult to shake as drug addiction, and multiple rounds of therapy/rehab are typically required.
A complication of rehabilitation is monitoring of individual physicians' prescriptions by DEA. Every month is assumed to have thirty days except February, which is recognized as having 28. All other months are counted as thirty days each, and prescriptions are written on a 'months' basis. This leaves the patient with the problem of prescriptions expiring on weekends with no authority to refill a needed prescription.
Opiates and opioids have other uses, especially in controlling liquid output from the GI tract. A year ago I contacted my daughter's pain management physician to sort out how to get her through a long weekend without access to tincture of opium, which is primarily used to control diarrhea. My daughter had an ileostomy and would lose electrolytes and face the danger of dehydration. We worked out a formula to take a ten percent reduction in each dose of the opium and compensate with a few mg of an oxycodone prescription I had left over. No one made a record of the discussion, which was illegal.