I'm only thinking about this bc I just had surgery and I'm on oxy for the first time in 17 years, but, like...
Doctors really claim, like as a profession, that they just didn't know fucking opium was highly addictive and oopsie woopsie did a little fucky wucky and now like a million people are dead?
Cause I really never thought about that, but I took 1 "take 2 every four hours" pill SEVEN FUCKING HOURS AGO and I am still tripping balls and in my current altered state their cutesy little "We just forgot morphine was dangerous" shtick sounds pretty fucking ridiculous.
Oh and the DEA and FDA must have been in on this, too, right? The whole time? Because no one would actually be stupid enough to believe this shit, right?
ex-opiate addict here. Did pills for like 4 years, then heroin for another 3ish. I wanted to like, have an answer that was a little more i depth, and I tried to type out some stuff that gave more information and nuance but there isn't any. I considered typing something up for people that weren't aware of the situation so they could understand. I wanted to be able to explain the intricacies of a fucked up system that takes advantage of the poor and destitute. I thought about warning people . None of that is realistic. None of it matters.
"Yes" is the only accurate answer
True Anon ep 138: OC 80 covers this really well. Brace of course has first hand experience with it. But ya the pure evil on display with just this instance of capitalist evil should be enough to condemn the ideology for all time.
Yes, and pain management nurses fucking wish death upon them because now it's impossible to get proper pain meds for situations that legitimately require them (and not just a fucking $50 tylenol pill).
Alexa, what was Afghanistan's most profitable cash crop for the last 20 years?
👁️
I wouldn't say all doctors explicitly had a deal to sell more opioids because the profit motive is a sufficient cause, but yes
Profit motive? Honey doctors did it for little more than a pizza party.
being prescribed large amounts for minor conditions or what
yeah basically. but its lumped together & muddled with the 'war on drugs'. sometimes "opiod epidemic" is people getting addicted through 'over'prescription, sometimes its talking about overdose deaths (sometimes related to scripts, sometimes not), and sometimes its just about perseptions & fearmongering around the fact of druguse whatsoever
A missing component here is that lot of the minor pain was chronic pain. People would go out and develop chronic pain from the American lifestyle or hard labor like construction and then be prescribed a diet of prediction opioids by doctors, which isn't so much pain management as it is total obliteration of the person over time.
How were doctors prescribing opiates?
Did your shoulder kinda ache ?
Here's an OC80!
Realistically it takes a few months of daily use to develop a proper physical addiction so how did that work?
US doctors prescribe opiates for chronic pain. People were taking them for months on end under doctors' advice.
Yeah and after a while opiates became somewhat harder to get in a few places because of the crisis. The hospital mass shooting that occurred a few years back was because the guy was unable to get any medication for his back pain
When i got my wisdom teeth removed like 15 years ago they gave me two weeks worth of oxycodon. They were handing it out like candy.
Yeah I'm 30 now but when I fractured my ankle when I was 15 they prescribed me like multiple refills of Percocets.
Yeah my mom took them away and replaced the bottle with ibuprofens, was a good move on her part as I found out not very long later how much I liked all sorts of drugs
I'm absolutely shocked at how well tylenol and ibuprofen are controlling my post-surgical pain like 30 hours out. Almost every time i've been injured for years i've gotten little or no relief from ibuprofen and mostly just toughed it out. I honestly thought taking tylenol for pain was a kind of ha ha joke and that everyone knew it didn't work but there were no alternatives. And like on sunday i was writhing in a hospital bed in immense pain whenever the opioid they we giving me started to run down. This whole experience has been so goddamn bizarre.
I got two weeks of oxy for the same reason. I didn’t touch that shit
i had an umbilical hernia that i had been living with until deciding to get it dealt with. minor outpatient surgery. i went in in the morning, was put under general anesthesia, and i was being wheeled out to a car a few hours later, mere moments after waking up in a recovery room. this was in about 2015, and in a region that had been targeted specifically by the pharmaceutical countries to be early adopters of a "new" opiate formulation. so by the time of my surgery, there have been tons of headlines, speeches, and general noise made about the ongoing opiate crisis / public health catastrophe. i'm not a substance abuse guy (except weed lol), but you can only hear so many stories of people who got addicted after an injury before wondering how easily it could happen to you.
anyway, the discharge nurse hands me a bag with a bottle on my way out the door with enough pills to be absolutely blasted out of my skull for a week straight. i asked if i could use other pain meds, like tylenol/aleve, etc, and they just scoffed and said they were giving me better stuff. i took one the day after when whatever medication i was on for the surgery was gone. after that i just took regular over the counter stuff for a few days, and then was out of pain. my bottle of oxys also came with a refill. i guess so i could just be fucked out of my head for two weeks straight if i wanted.
when i went back in for the post surgery consult a month later, i was asked how the experience was. i told them everything was great, but i felt like i was overprescribed pain meds. seeing as how i only used about 2% of what i was allotted, and even that felt unnecessary. i figured i was doing the responsible thing by telling them, like maybe they didn't know. anyway, she turned to me, super pissed, and was like, "well, you got through it, didn't you?!" like i was an asshole for mentioning it. like, literally, it was all over the headlines at every institution how our communities were in crisis due to these drugs being thrown around like candy.
doctors, by virtue of their association with insurance companies and pharma, are inherently untrustworthy. awesome country to live in
Death to America
I sincerely do not believe doctors should be allowed around patients unless a patient's rights advocate who has no financial incentives in common with the doctor is present.
I never see doctors alone. Always go with my parents or significant other, or even both if it's a major, major appointment.
If it's something very private the close family I go with will leave the room for a bit.
Is it childish? I guess so, but when I go to the doctors, the news is never good lol. I need backup!
I can see the point, but this would be a bureaucratic nightmare. It would probably also make it tougher for some people to speak candidly about their health issues.
It would be better to remove the profit motive from healthcare and train enough doctors that replacing one for misconduct isn't a monumental task.
Yes and no, you had plenty of doctors that were just riding the newest train in medicine and getting rich off it but you also had a lot of outright lies from the pharma side just stating that they weren't as addictive and were far more effective than older medications. Doctors are just as human as the rest of us and between some accredited doctors saying it's great, the pharma companies sending people to schmooze you with somewhat expensive gifts, and just the general feel of the medical community, you have the start of the opiate epidemic. There have since been laws made that the most pharma companies can do is give you a free lunch and maybe some pens. They still send sales reps out to schmooze and talk up various products.
Depending on the tolerance and severity of the pain different doses are necessary. Someone that has a massive tolerance is going to need 10mg of oxy every 4 hours. On the other hand, 10mg of oxy every 4 hours could easily kill someone else by just OD'ing them. Opiates are important in pain management and are still a staple of post-surgery recovery, it's just also important to pair it with as many non-opiate interventions as possible, stuff like scheduled Tylenol, muscle relaxants to stop muscle spasms, therapy if necessary, etc.
Still, in the end, there was a conspiracy. The Sackler family wanted to make more money and thus used their influence to make it happen while knowing exactly what they were doing.
What really sucks about this is that the people who actually need these drugs are now demonized. Chronic pain/nerve damage patients who essentially just need painkillers to function normally now have a harder time getting them because of the overcorrection by doctors.
Yeah the dude who shot up a hospital was denied the meds for back pain. Not saying it’s justified, but chronic pain can turn you into a completely different person if left untreated
I have someone close to me who's been dealing with it for 30 years after a workplace injury.
They've been refused medication by pharmacists frequently, they've been mistreated and abused by doctors for being an "addict" and they literally cannot walk without their medication because of how severely damaged their nerves are
Yeah, I've had this argument before and for me it always boils down into "no one can know everything and you have to be willing to trust experts in a field for any large scale system/society to work" and "it's literally got opium".
The opium argument has only surface validity to me, (think "vaccines have mercury/arsenic" vibes) just because how often and how much processing is done to things that otherwise we can't ingest but still use in medicine.
There is obviously somewhere along the chain where the good faith argument breaks down and people were actively consciously accepting murdering people for profit and I don't see a need to be cautious on drawing that line.
Guys, I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, medical care shouldn't be tied to a profit motive.
There’s a good documentary on HBO max about it called crime of the century
nah it's totes safe bro, trust
fr tho don't take more than you need to manage the pain, don't ride it beyond that. Shit will sink its teeth in the moment you let it
I've taken one pill since I got out and I'm fucking done. If I can ride this out on ibuprofen and tylenol I'm doing it. I never, ever take pain meds so I forgot how weird and unpleasant oxy is.
Yeh I had wrist surgery last year and shit hurt like fuck for maybe 12-18 hours after the surgery, most of which time I was sleeping off the anaesthesia. I had a coupla oxies in the hospital after waking up and they gave my like 10 or something for at home but I was able to make it through with ibuprofen, paracetamol and ice/heat packs.
I had to do them for a couple of weeks as I was in an operation que with badly set bones that hurt like he'll. Shit sucked ass. Couldn't focus on anything, and I'm spaced out enough as it is. Also gave me constipation.
Still have a pack with 50 left as I didn't want to take them for more than a couple of days after the operation.
A few summers ago, I had a mild sunburn that turned into some kind of bizarre-ass sun allergy. It felt like a colony of fire ants crawling underneath my skin where the burn was, and the pain was so constant and intense that I was ready to [REDACTED] myself into a moving [REDACTED]. Aloe and lidocaine helped the surface of the burn itself, but not the histamine reaction underneath it. Before we figured out that it was a histamine reaction (and could be treated with just Benadryl or some such), I got into my partner's stash of post-birth pain meds from a few years before. One Vicodin completely got rid of the fire-ants-in-my-body sensation, but only for about 8 hours. For a day or two before the burn healed on its own, that was seriously the only way that I could sleep or function like a normal human.
When it happened again a year later (I didn't have as much sunscreen on as I thought I did), that was when I had the "hey, this is probably histamine" thought and tried dosing with the OTC allergy stuff. That worked, and I didn't end up needing to go on a three-day codeine bender. Personal opioid crisis averted, I guess?
Doc gave me Vicodin after I got my wisdom teeth out. I was totally thinking that at least the drugs would be fun. Nope! Turns out I'm allergic to Vicodin and I puked my guts out continuously until I was able to get a drug that made me stop vomiting. Which was a suppository. So my whole face hurts, I can't stop puking, and now I have to shove a big pill up my butt. That was a very bad day, but at least it's funny now.
Jesus, that's a hell of a way to find out you have a codeine allergy :sadness:
Doctor: Don't use a straw, you might dislodge the clots.
Me: 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮
Damn, as someone who went through the hellish nightmare of opioid addiction in the US and barely came out of it alive, I am perpetually amazed at the existence of people who don't like the way opioids feel. I remember taking my first hydrocodone pill and literally feeling like I had found the answer to everything.
I have severe depression, executive function problems, and a lot of other nasty mental health problems due to adhd and bipolar disorder. Anything that impairs my cognitive function in unexpected ways makes me immediately, extremely uncomfortable.i don't drink alcohol and only use legal thc to deal with pretty severe anxiety episodes. My brain is just too broken to find any additional impairment enjoyable. It's usually more towards horrifying.
All of that together means the only time's i've done recreational drugs are when there was a suggestion they could relieve depression. I think the perspective from which i experience mind altering drugs is very different from most people, which may be why we felt so differently.
any additional impairment
I think that's probably the important thing here. It seems you perceive the sensation of an opioid high to be impairing, like alcohol is. I totally understand why many people wouldn't like that even if I do.
The way I perceive an opioid high seems to be different in a way that predisposes people like me toward opioid addiction. When I use opioids I don't feel impaired at all (even if I definitely am!). I just feel this profound sense of calm and comfort, like everything is fine and it'll all work out in the end. For a while I thought it had cured my depression and anxiety. That is what many opioid users call the honeymoon phase. Unfortunately it ends once your tolerance reaches a certain point and you become very physically dependent, then the nightmare begins. But it seems there's a large subset of people who don't go through that honeymoon phase at all, and are thus less likely to get addicted.
It is wild how differently two people can react to the same substance. I have bipolar disorder, and for one reason or another bipolar people tend to be extremely vulnerable to habit forming substances, but i've never felt pressure to use anything outside strictly functional contexts. But then right beside me is someone who has been using alcohol to treat symptoms for decades.
It's just bizarre. I think most people think of themselves as "normal" but then you start to realize how much variation their is in people and how deeply, deeply weird that feels. Like i could ruin someone's hard-earned peace just by casually offering them a beer, but me being offered a beer is no danger at all.
Yeah, the handful that they give you for post-surgery recovery aren't going to turn you into Axl Rose overnight. Still, don't stay on them for any longer than you absolutely have to, and if you have chronic pain, you're pretty much boned. Might as well get the pleather pants and start working on an off-key rendition of "Paradise City" now if you aren't in a state with medical weed.
Lol I got prescribed percocets when I was 15 for a fucking hairline fracture on my ankle. I'm glad my mom was smart enough to swap them out for ibuprofen(though I do wonder where they went hmmmm mom?).
It was not very long ago when doctors were giving them at like literally candy
If you are white though. I also had an injury in my teens and was given the ibuprofen. Then I got t boned in my 20s when the whole “opioid epidemic” was going on and was given ibuprofen again. Even though I had some broken bones because they “were afraid I would become addicted like those other people.” Then you learn that the manuals these people use specifically says to “not give drugs to Latinos as they work through it” or whatever. I’m just pissed because I’ve never have been given these scary drugs and I had to instead find my own. I was in pain both times and they were just being racist. :what-the-hell:
Oh yeah there's clips going around where fairly recent text books explain how the morphological skull shape of the various races accounts for their different responses to pain, which is why it's okay to give pain medicine to whites but not people of color.
I also found out that, living laughing, loving out loud, those little finger monitors they were using to check my blood oxygen saturation to make sure my respiratory system wasn't crashing from the opioids this weekend don't work on people with dark skin. Like no, of course they wouldn't, why would any medical device ever be tested to see if it works with, what, like 60? 70% of the planetary population?
I once broke my pinky and cracked a tooth, after 5 hours waiting in the ER to get checked out, I was really annoyed due to the whole missing half of a couple teeth thing. Never expressed pain, doctors asked if I was in pain, told them just a little. Gave me an oxy without me asking, I told them I needed to drive my ass back after and they told me I already paid for the oxy and I'd be fine to drive home.
Got insanely lucky though, a dentist was on staff at the er at 11pm on a friday, and was able to put some temporary caps on my teeth. Props to that dentist for enabling me to eat that weekend.
McKinsey consulted for both Purdue Pharma and the FDA at the same time without disclosing their conflict of interest, and deliberately pushed the FDA to make changes beneficial to Purdue.
Oh my god source? That is the most capitalism. That is the peak. I want to know more.
The book "When McKinsey Comes to Town" has a section on Purdue. It's a great book for making you mad.
Idk but I've had weird experiences with doctors who maybe wanted to get me addicted to opiates and so I'd return to them for another script?
My dentist gave me a fuck load of codeine and oxy when I got my wisdom teeth removed as a 14 year old. He literally winked at me and said "these are cool party drugs, you're gonna feel really good on them"
Queue me responsibly using my entire stash (that I never needed for the wisdom teeth pain) recreationally until I ran out at 18 and till now, I'm still hopeful that some day I can get real pills again instead of pressed fent
I also love so many drugs now (still somewhat responsibly) which I'm pretty sure stemmed from my early opiate experience
Wow they gave you opiates for wisdom teeth, that's fuckin wild. I had mine out last year and the doc basically gave me a bottle of Tylenol.
They gave everyone oxy for their wisdom teeth. Lots of it. For years. And everything else. I haven't thought about this for a long time but between kids having teeth out, breaking bones, various sports injuries, and minor surgeries there was always oxy rattling around the house. That's just how it was in the 90s-00s.
