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anything related to addiction medicine
The Opiod Epidemic
- Thread starter Lavalamp
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That a& e intervention was no good.
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I, fortunately, have never been a person who gets hooked on things like that. I could always take it or leave it. I could spend a weekend doing whatever drugs were around and forget it on Monday. Looking back, I see how rare that is for most people. All of the people I used to hang around with look 20 years older than me. I saw a girl I dated before I met my wife a few weeks back and she looked so bad that it actually messed me up for a week or so. She was way out of my league back in the day and now she looks like a gross, used up bar slut and I know its all because of pills.
People like that are why I've never been on board with just legalizing all drugs. Giving people like that easier access is so wrong its unfathomable to me why people think its a good idea.
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Sherdog has become almost unusable for me in the last few days, so I apologize for my late reply.
In the study it looks like they are comparing the minimum dosage of oxycodone to a rather large dosage of ibuprofen. It's interesting data, but just about any ER doctor or any other doctor that is familiar with pain management will tell you that opioids are the best thing we have for acute pain.
Of those 33,000 opioid overdose deaths 12,989 were heroin overdoses. It's convienant to leave that fact out. Many other fatal overdoses are related to Fentanyl and Fentanyl analogs (synthetic Fentanyl).
Another thing that gets left out is that most fatal opioid overdoses involve mixing other drugs with opioids. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...un/08/opioid-epidemic-drug-mix-overdose-death
I'm trying to find data on the percentage of opioid deaths that are from opioids alone, but I'm coming up short at the moment, I don't know how often conflating factors get reported in opioid related deaths, and there is no national standard for reporting toxicology data.
Alcohol was involved in at least 22.1% of opioid related deaths:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6340a1.htm
I say at least because the number could be much higher given how different states report toxicology data.
A study done in San Francisco showed that 74.9% of opioid deaths involved mixing opioids with other drugs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26077643
Yes my story was anecdotal, but it's far from the only one. Many people with chronic pain are feeling the pinch, and some turn to illicit painkillers when their doctors cut them off. It's not people looking for pain relief that are killing themselves in droves, it's people looking to get high.
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I've worked in emergency departments for too long and I am so glad to be out of that area. There's a huge opiod problem. Also fuck patient surveys.
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What?!?!?!
It's great! That one guy was OD'ing TWICE A MONTH and his girlfriend is LOCO!
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Opiates are great for pain relief bringing pain to tolerable levels. People for some reason want to pop these until they’re completely numb or zonked out which is generally advised not to do.
When I discharge patients from the hospital and they have a prescription I give them all they need to know regarding these meds and how to use em, but we can’t control what people do at home.
I’ve read in some countries you can’t even prescribe these medications and the only way to get em is to go directly to an anesthesiologist to get a dose for relief if the pain is that extreme.
Then there’s idiots who just pop em for fun, become addicted and then turn to heroin when they can’t get a script anymore.
When I discharge patients from the hospital and they have a prescription I give them all they need to know regarding these meds and how to use em, but we can’t control what people do at home.
I’ve read in some countries you can’t even prescribe these medications and the only way to get em is to go directly to an anesthesiologist to get a dose for relief if the pain is that extreme.
Then there’s idiots who just pop em for fun, become addicted and then turn to heroin when they can’t get a script anymore.
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Excellent post.
A couple things to add:
1. The take home about the Albany study is that there are alternatives in many, if not most, cases where opioids have become the default treatment.
Oxycodone is not some novel drug that just popped on the scene. Oxycodone has been around since before WWII. The US recognized its abuse potential and made it a schedule II drug. Percocet was developed in 1976. There was opioid epidemic in this country until the early 90s when OxyContin was being pushed for any pain, not just cancer and extreme pain.
2. Opioids are not illegal to prescribe. If doctors aren’t going to write Percocet for a kidney stone because they’re afraid the DEA is going to raid their practice, then they should find a new line of work. Nobody is forcing prescribers to neglect pain.
But just because opioids provide superior analgesia doesn’t mean they're always appropriate.
What did you wind up doing for your stone? Did you have to go to the er?
3. Heroin use spiked as soon as OxyContin developed an abuse deterrent formulation. The rise is heroin deaths is related to the use and abuse of Prescription opioids.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nid...ion-to-opioids-heroin-prescription-drug-abuse
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Dilaudid pills are heavenly. They don't make you feel all zonked out like oxycodone. You can actually function quite well on them but you feel amazing. I know this because I had a wacky surgeon prescribe me 60 8mg pills for a simple foot surgery. I didn't get hooked but I certainly danced with the devil for a month.
Also had a close childhood friend overdose a few years ago. He wasn't even addicted, he had no tolerance. But hanging out with pillheads got him killed. They gave him a xanax right before he was about to nod off from oxy and it did him in.
I really wish people who lack tolerances would be more careful. I bet a large portion of the deaths are by new users.
Also had a close childhood friend overdose a few years ago. He wasn't even addicted, he had no tolerance. But hanging out with pillheads got him killed. They gave him a xanax right before he was about to nod off from oxy and it did him in.
I really wish people who lack tolerances would be more careful. I bet a large portion of the deaths are by new users.
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I've heard conflicting stats on this and have seen in my town the people that usually OD or die are long time users that jump to a different drug and then take too much.
Like, they've been on say 50 mg PKs and then jump to 100 mg and take the same pill total or some shit as an example.
