http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/politics-pain-supply-vs-demand
For a small segment of society, such as hospice patients during the dying process, opioids can be one tool in the arsenal used to relieve torturous pain. Thus, the drug-makers’ efforts have made pain relief more available. But people recovering after a car crash or back surgery risk addiction they might never have been susceptible to otherwise…
Really? If you may be susceptible to an opioid addiction, does that mean you have to spend your whole life avoiding painkillers? Is abstinence the answer for every addiction? (Try telling that to people who are addicted to food.)
Is this article trying to say that surgery can be done without opioids? How many people would have surgery if they knew it would not include painkillers? Looks like the opioid war is going to put a lot of surgeons out of business. Good riddance, I say.
No one knows if they have the potential for addiction until they are suffering from it. Yes, your family history can be a clue, but it’s never 100% right. A person would have to not drink, gamble, have sex, or take drugs to avoid an addiction, whatever it might turn out to be. Sorry, but that’s not the way the world works. That’s not how humans work.
Those advocating for the opioid war say they are trying to stop addiction before it starts. Is that realistic? Is that the way addiction works? The experts tell us plenty of ways to prevent cancer, but that doesn’t stop everyone from getting it. As women, we know how to avoid domestic abuse and rape, but those crimes still happen every single day.
Law-makers say heroin addiction often starts when people abuse prescription pain killers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say people who get addicted to prescription pain killers are 40 times more likely to become addicted to heroin…
If you suffer from an addiction to painkillers, you’re already addicted to “heroin.” Duh. Would a painkiller addict be 40 times more likely to become addicted to illegal heroin? No, that’s not right. This is just the CDC inflating incorrect statistics again, making them scarier than the reality. Like taking a painkiller is one step away from taking illegal heroin. Considering the number of people who’ve taken painkillers (without any risk of turning to illegal heroin) and the number of actual heroin addicts, the CDC’s numbers don’t compute.
“We’ve become dependent really on using strong pain killers for treatment of regular aliments, such as cancer and inadvertently many people have become addicted to those pain killers,” said Isenhart.
Yes, that’s right, medical experts are now saying that cancer is a regular ailment, not always deserving of treatment with painkillers. You think if you have cancer, you’ll automatically get access to opioids and adequate pain management? Not during the opioid war.
While the opioid war looks at painkillers as a curse, I see them as a gift. Yes, they can be abused, just like almost everything else on this Earth. Even love can be abused. Love can also kill. Should we have a war against love?
All Things Chronic 