What I find so weird about that is that every time I’ve been prescribed Oxycontin (Hydrocodone and Acetaminophen, right?), I got H+A, not Oxycontin. So, I don’t even know why the pharmaceutical companies would push it so hard – it’s a generic drug now. And, it’s super-cheap, at least with my insurance.
I was prescribed it three times, filled the prescription once, and then took one pill and stopped. Then, my kids were each prescribed for their pulled wisdom teeth. I think they took one each and we got rid of the rest. Having your wisdom teeth pulled? Here, have some heroin! Doc, I’m not really in pain. “Here, take the script anyway, just in case.” One week later: Doc, I never even filled the last one. “Here, take another one, just in case.”
I think there should be a major crackdown on doctors who over-prescribe, so that people with legitimate needs will continue to have it available. The risk is that we go down a reefer-madness path and it’s banned, then people with real issues will be up a creek.
Yes, that’s the real risk that I see. You’ll lose it completely because some doctors don’t know what they are doing.
There are pain specialists, and other types of doctors who often deal with pain conditions. They could get certified to prescribe, and that could help a lot.
It actually be a considerably bigger problem. I know in every thread like this people like to make that joke/not-joke. Sure, give the junkies all the drugs they want, let them die, then we’ll be back to how it was before. Call the doc, tell them your foot hurts, go to Walgreens 20 minutes later and your Percocet is sitting there waiting to be picked up.
However, that’s not how this is going to end. It’s going in the other direction. Everytime someone ODs (moreso if they’re high profile, ie Prince), the polices, rules, laws etc get stricter.
A CII script I take, I used to pick up 3 at once and let the pharmacy hold them, filling one each month. Can’t do that anymore. Each month I have to pick a new one up from the doc and bring it to the pharmacy.
Now I have to make an appointment with him every three months for a ‘med check’.
Recently I had to sign a contract with him. It stated that I agreed to get all narcotics (my med isn’t a narcotic) from him as well as all from the same pharmacy and same insurance etc. This form, I assume, was just a standard form within the group he works for.
I know some states (maybe just Ohio) have recently just passed a law saying that doctors, in most cases (with a few exceptions) can only write scripts for 7 days worth of meds at a time. I understand the idea is to prevent you from complaining that your foot hurts, getting 90 vicodins (take 3 times a day for 30 days, call back if it still hurts), but then after 2 days you’re fine, by next month you’ve forgotten about them and a few years later someone steals them. But it’s also clearly to prevent people from faking pain to get pills, it’s less worthwhile when they can only get 10 or 15 pills instead of 60 or 90.
So, sure wish death upon the junkies that you don’t know (even though you likely know some) but in the end they’ll make some adjustments and your life will get more difficult…like having to show an ID and ask the pharmacist for Sudafed.
I can’t remember who it was and I don’t feel like using my google fu right now, but wasn’t someone (state?) threatening to sue the DEA last year because they were the ones who had approved the massive increase in Opioid drug production?
This is kinda like the tobacco lawsuits in the 90s. A lot will depend on how much the drug companies hid negative information like addictiveness and overdose risk from doctors and the public. It also depends on how much the drug companies did to encourage the “pill mills” that existed before the big crackdown. Chances are, there will be enough nefarious dealings to result in big settlements.
One thing that I will note, in this thread, is that everyone is falling into the belief that there are legitimate patients, who need the drugs, and druggies, and the legitimate users will follow the instructions and be safe, and everyone else will over do it and OD. While I’ll grant that this isn’t an area of expertise of mine, nor am I a doctor, I would say that it’s pretty likely that you’ll OD no matter who you are. I’m pretty sure that a goodly number of those OD deaths are those perfectly reasonable, rule following users - it could be a majority of them. Maybe they drank a lot that night, maybe they forgot that they had already taken a pill that day, maybe the doctor prescribed the wrong dose and they didn’t notice, overall, it’s a dangerous path even if it’s a necessary one.
And fundamentally, the issue isn’t with drug use so much as it is about deaths and media presentation. Once the people flip out, poor choices will be made by the government to resolve it. There are probably reasonable mechanisms for finding a best of all bad options available, but that doesn’t happen when everyone goes crazy because there’s an “epidemic”.
While the data is also online now a traditional approach was the Physicians’ Desk Reference, which compiled all this information: Physician - Wikipedia’_Desk_Reference
And we do hope that doctors do due diligence. But I am uncertain about that. I had a physical some many years ago, because it had been a while. The doctor asked if I had any complaints. I said something about being overly laconic all the time. Boom, first thing out of his mouth was “Prozac” (or whatever was in vogue at the time), whither I chose not to go. But it left me with the impression that physicians are all too ready to hand out the pills.
Yes, it was just one data point, so maybe I am wrong. And, of course, not all of them are like that. But if your job is to handle complaints all day, it seems likely that you would use the easiest means at hand. And pharma is certainly eager to provide you with profitable shortcuts.
The issue is that today’s addicts were yesterday’s responsible, legitimate users who were prescribed opiates much too freely and given little or no advice on how to avoid developing a dependency, nor how to effectively step down if they did.
The new, stricter guidelines aren’t aimed at stopping current addicts from abusing. They are aimed at stopping new addicts from occurring.
I thought that shady “pain centers” were the problem, but I don’t know if doctors are certified for pain treatment. It does seem like a smart thing to do.
From the studies I’ve seen, most opioid addicts are recreational users. Current attempts to crack down, which target mainly legitimate prescriptions, just push legitimate pain patients to seek their meds elsewhere. We’ve been doing this for a few years now, and the opioid crisis is only getting worse.
Whole there are people who truly have a legitimate need for opiates, there are some people who think all aches and pains should go away. This causes higher doses and strength and ultimately dependency. People need to toughen up. There will be bumps, bruises, and scrapes in life.
Well then what is the source of the drugs the recreational users use if it is not prescriptions? Any data showing it is drug thefts or illegally manufactured drugs…
Agreed with this, for regular pain. There’s no reason to prescribe heroin for a broken ankle, and I wasn’t in pain anyway. There’s really no reason to prescribe it for wisdom teeth. My oldest’s teeth were impacted and got infected, and she tried one pill because she was having trouble sleeping. I’m sure Advil would have at least helped, without the downside risks.
Now, for really serious pain like Buck’s wife or obbn, it’s a different story. And, we should all be on the same side here because if the opioid epidemic continues, those guys may be screwed.
I could point out that your statement is a bit questionable as stated. It leaves an uncomfortable gap where you can simply dismiss anyone who doesn’t follow instructions as a simple druggy. But both the sharp decline in usage and deaths when doctors stopped over prescribing tells us that these were people who arrived at the place they arrived at through proper medical need. They may have then spun off into misuse and insanity, but that’s a much different thing from bored hobos hitting up pill mills just to live up their existence.
What I don’t understand is there was lots of people addicted to Opioid and people abusing Opioid before year 2010!! But after the year 2010 people addicted to Opioid and people abusing Opioid is bringing about skyrocketing overdose now!!:eek::eek::eek:
That what I don’t understand. Are they giving out stronger opioid now days or just more people using opioid now days?
Year see overdose skyrocketing started after year 2010 before that was much lower.
Now every year it getting worse.
Is it opioid now days are just stronger or more people using opioids.
sorry for her situation.