I have to balance that with the unrealistic ultra-conservatism of the medical profession. Many years ago, when I had a broken rib that was so painful that my co-workers later told me I had turned white as a sheet and nearly passed out, my PCP prescribed … Tylenol-3! After a sleepless night I drove right back to the doctor’s office the next day in a painful rage, and demanded something that actually worked! That’s when I finally, with some reluctance, got a prescription for Demerol. Which actually worked.
Why TF didn’t I get it in the first place? Did it make me an opioid addict? No. It provided for comfortable sleep while the fracture healed.
Tylenol 3 contains codeine, which is a pretty good analgesic. People’s reaction to both pain and opiates varies a great deal. Lots of people do become addicted to opiates from legally prescribed pain meds – that’s the primary source of our current opioid problem.
It’s good medicine to start with less dangerous medications and only ramp up to more dangerous ones if those don’t work.
Is that really the case? IIRC, you’re in Canada, are Canadian (or American) medical doctors really such an ultra-conservative bunch? Because I never had that impression here in Germany, and yet doctors generally tell their patients to cut back on alcohol. And wasn’t the whole disaster of the opioid crisis caused by doctors who were much too lenient in giving prescriptions for the drugs? (ok, that was fueled by bribes from the pharma industry, but still)
It was also fueled by misinformation from the pharma industry, trying to convince doctors that pain meds were safer than they actually are.
We might be in the midst of a backlash to that. But it was a very real problem. And we have a lot of opioid addicts as a result of medical prescriptions for stuff like broken bones.
It’s hard to know. If doctors are advising people in general to stick to two drinks a week, they’re being way more conservative than the treatment guidelines recommend. But if a particular person tells you they’ve gotten that advice, there’s no way to know if it’s reasonable FOR THEM without knowing their whole medical history.
I also had a broken rib, about 8 years ago, and it was the worst pain in my life, for two weeks at least. What did my doctor prescribe? Good old Ibuprofen. I could handle it without something stronger.
I had a broken wrist as a kid, and it was the second worst pain in my life. I spent the night fantasizing about cutting off my hand. I knew, rationally, that that would make it worse, but that didn’t stop the fantasy. I still wish they’d given me better pain meds that night. (I forget what they gave me, but it didn’t work.) But by the next day it was only a little painful, and i didn’t need meds.
The worst pain in my life was the peak of delivering my son (who was breach.) But that only lasted a few seconds, and I’m glad I didn’t have meds for that, and didn’t need to recover from meds later.
If Ibuprofen worked for you, then that’s great. It might even have worked for me, because I’ve found it more effective for toothaches than any form of Tylenol, with or without codeine. But I really needed something strong like Demerol for my rib fracture. It wasn’t a question of being a wimp – I just simply couldn’t sleep, and turning over in bed was agonizing.
The annoying thing was being initially denied this relief because … reasons – medical ethics, addiction, etc. The baseline assumptions that physicians seem to make is that their patients are all low-intelligence mammals who are easily addicted and may, if prescribed opioids, become violent offenders in pursuit of their drug habit. JFC, all I wanted was to get some sleep!
I totally take your Caesar drinking, Dog persona as hyperbole for the most part (I’m pretty sure you are really a pup, but a bit wolfish).
I’m thinking after this long, the post in question is ridiculous to complain about.
Doctors(and I’ve seen way over my share of them) differ. Conservative or all the way to don’t give a shit. The happy medium is what I’m looking for.
It is not easy to find a good, centered and smart doctor. You have to take some advice with a grain of salt.
Then you ask family, friends and yes, maybe post it on a message board you consider intelligent. In the end it’s the patients responsibility to try to make all advice fit in their life. Or not.
I get unsolicited advice constantly. But if I ask out loud, for someone’s opinion, I have to take what I get. And then I choose what to accept and what to discard.
So just to clarify, you quoted digs saying that he felt NA spirits lacked the “bite” of alcohol; your first sentence was “My solution to alcohol-free liquor that lacks “bite” is to consume proper liquor that does have alcohol in it.” and it should be obvious from that sentence that you weren’t offering advice to digs?
Can you walk us through that? Because usually in English communication if someone asks for advice about a problem, the person who replies saying “My solution to that problem is to…” is taken to be offering advice. Like, it’s possible they’re just a narcissist who uses other people’s problems to waffle on about themselves, but by far the most common interpretation is that they’re offering their solution for the first person to use. In the light of that, are you completely sure that your first sentence should have made it clear that you were decidedly not offering advice to digs?
Your second sentence of course was “Seriously, just do it in moderation, unless you have liver disease”. An imperative! Literally telling someone what to do. Preceeded by a modifier that emphasises the sincerity of what follows! But not advice to anyone, how could anyone possibly read it like that? Especially not digs, who was the OP of the thread and whom you quoted in that post. Good thing too, because if you had just told someone on doctor’s orders to cut out alcohol that they should ignore that and keep drinking spirits, that would be, as LHOD says, exceptionally poor form.
… states that they needed strong pain medication but were denied because their doctors seemed to think that all of their patients are going to become addicts.
On a second read, and as I type this, I now see what you were reacting to- there is an unexamined truism being put forth on the part of our narrator @wolfpup that low-intelligence is related to addiction. That there is no risk for the intelligent patient. Why would they put that association in the made-up train of thought of the doctor if they themselves didn’t make that association?
Doctors have had to go through rigorous exams to be admitted to medical school, undergone demanding residencies, and maybe further specialist training. It’s natural for them to assume that their patients are dumbasses. Some of my doctors or specialists seem taken aback when I ask detailed medical questions. It’s like, “how do you know this stuff?”.
There is no reliable data on how intelligence relates to addiction potential. There is some evidence that high-intelligence young adults are more likely to experiment with substance abuse, but then stop before developing chronic addiction. Lower intelligence is loosely correlated with educational disadvantage, poverty, and possibly poor impulse control, perhaps leading to a higher probability of drug addiction. But the correlations are, indeed, far from clear.
What is clear (to me) is that doctors generally stop far, far short of safety threholds in their prescribing methodologies. I once had an easy-going doctor in my hyperactive youth who was happy to give me prescriptions for Valium for many months on end. Problems? None. But today “Valium” is a dirty word and a doctor might prescribe it for maybe a week, but no more, because … addiction!
Whatever else one might believe, medical ultra-conservatism is a reality. If, according to my esteemed PCP and hepatologist, having just a glass of wine with dinner every night makes me an at-risk alcoholic, I don’t know what to say.
Thx