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Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

theguardian.com

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Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#81

Post by devilbunny »

zdragnar wrote: post #60
diamondap wrote: post #44

A few years ago, I talked to three retired federal law enforcement agents who had each spent 20+ years fighting the cartels that were bringing drugs into the US from Mexico and South America. All three felt betrayed by the US government. They said, essentially, "We put our lives on the line many times to try to stop the flow of drugs. Then the government turned around and basically gave the pharmaceuticals license to…

A friend of mine was a mechanic in the air Force and took a wrench to the knee. The VA basically prescribed him a giant bottle of benzos and told him to take them as needed. Young man laid up at home with nothing to do but sit on the couch playing video games and drink beer. Add in a big bottle of pain pills to take "as needed" and you've got an addict.

Benzos are not pain meds. Might make you an addict, but if that’s what was prescribed, it wasn’t for pain. Dunk on the VA all you like, but they’re not that bad.

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#82

Post by rayiner »

kibwen wrote: post #51
Loughla wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. The center of this country (outside of a few major urban/sub-urban areas) is hollow. Between the loss of agriculture as a family job, loss of industrial jobs, and opioid use after decades of methamphetamine use, it's bleak. And no one really cares. As a general rule, we're told, "just move to Chicago (St. Louis, Kansas City, wherever)". That's not a solution, or a possibility for a lot of folks.

> That's not a solution, or a possibility for a lot of folks. Then we need to work to make it a solution and a possibility, because I don't know what the alternative is. I'm from Appalachia, though my former oil-town retains a meager amount of relevance via the nearby industrial dairy farm. The owner of the only grocery store retired and nobody was interested in taking over, so the storefront laid empty until the gov…

[flagged]

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#83

Post by chasil »

swayvil wrote: post #66
impossiblefork wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opioids are almost certainly worse than antidepressants, and I don't see why you appear to believe that they are alternatives to each other. Any entity participating in an endeavour which as part of its activities distributes, markets or which through propaganda or political action defends the use of opioids must be destroyed, because opioids are a chemical weapon. They aren't 'illegal drugs'. They're a means to dest…

How are opioids worse than antidepressants ?

I am not greatly familiar with the dangers of antidepressants. I do know that abruptly lowering the dose for some can cause thoughts of suicide. Some have side effects of sexual dysfunction. Some cause weight gain. That's about the limit of my knowledge.

What I know about the opioid class of drugs is that tolerance builds so the dosages commonly increase, too much stops the heart, and trying to stop causes violent withdrawal.

To me, opioids sound far more dangerous, enough to get its very own disorder.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_use_disorder

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#84

Post by lukan »

nsagent wrote: post #75
diamondap wrote: post #44

A few years ago, I talked to three retired federal law enforcement agents who had each spent 20+ years fighting the cartels that were bringing drugs into the US from Mexico and South America. All three felt betrayed by the US government. They said, essentially, "We put our lives on the line many times to try to stop the flow of drugs. Then the government turned around and basically gave the pharmaceuticals license to…

My mom worked as an ER physician in Pennington Gap, VA during the early years of opioid abuse there (late nineties through through the early oughts) [1]. She would constantly complain about drug seekers there and refused to give out pain meds. According to her, she was the only doctor who would refuse to give out pain meds. Fast forward to 2022, she needed heart surgery and was in the ICU for three weeks afterward. S…

"though it was clear she was in pain"

One can learn how to handle pain yourself. Some people went very far with this.

While younger, I was a bit advanced in those technics - basically it is about accepting the pain and working with it.

In my theory, pain was like a alarm sound - and a painkiller just deactivating the alarm, but therefore maybe stopping a adequate body response.

Nowdays I got a bit softer as currently I am on weak painkillers, but a very low dose compared to the recommendations. And for my (disease related) empty stomach, this is probably way better. Also less extra stress on the liver and kidneys.

But even so, I experienced the feeling, that can put people into the path of addiction. Just one more pill and everything feels fine again. No more struggle, being calm again. But this is dangerous.

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#85

Post by devilbunny »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #61
bloopernova wrote: post #23

I was in the care of a pain clinic when the fire hose was abruptly shut off. I wasn't being given oxycontin, but I still suffered from the sudden change. I went from sustainable maintenance to a drug that gave me serious side effects, but the doctors refused to listen. Even when a sleep study objectively showed the damage the buprenorphine was doing, I was told it's that or nothing. The doctors were terrified of new…

The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them. I’ve had similar experiences with them not giving me proper painmeds are having all 4 of my wisdom teeth removed. They gave me 2 weeks of Tylenol #3 and some homeopathic bullshit and expected that to be good enough. Luckily my stepdad is a serious medical patient with lots of…

I don’t live in your skin, but I had all of my wisdom teeth extracted under local anesthetics without sedation. And I never even needed an NSAID.

Maybe it hurt you that bad, but it’s not par for the course.

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#86

Post by objektif »

emptysongglass wrote: post #71
devjab wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Scandinavian I find this an odd take on the situation. To me it seems like the US has a very, very, broken healthcare system that you’ve chosen to have by electing politicians who aren’t going to reform it into something reasonable. My wife and I presently had twins, and we spent 7 days living in the hospital with a lot of help from nurses and so on, and it cost us $130. Which was me paying for 3 days of living…

As a fellow Dane, you must also know how close our public healthcare is to crumbling, how long wait times are for care, our record highest cancer rate in the world of any nation, and a policy of treating only acute conditions (no cancer screenings deemed "unnecessary" etc.) I have been misdiagnosed a number of times and was finally treated in the US for a major condition the doctors missed here in Denmark. We get a n…

This is a good point but you really need to have a comparison when you say your healthcare is crumbling. Are you talking about specialized care?

I think healthcare in the US is beyond messed up. In my area which is a large city in the North East US it is very difficult to be able to get into ER because rooms are filled with people who are trying to get non-urgent care. These people have no money, no insurance and their only way to get care is to go to ER. System is rotten to the core.

I also did not get your last paragraph are you talking about the US or Denmark? I would be shocked to hear income inequality problem is worse in Denmark.

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#87

Post by MSFT_Edging »

emptysongglass wrote: post #71
devjab wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Scandinavian I find this an odd take on the situation. To me it seems like the US has a very, very, broken healthcare system that you’ve chosen to have by electing politicians who aren’t going to reform it into something reasonable. My wife and I presently had twins, and we spent 7 days living in the hospital with a lot of help from nurses and so on, and it cost us $130. Which was me paying for 3 days of living…

As a fellow Dane, you must also know how close our public healthcare is to crumbling, how long wait times are for care, our record highest cancer rate in the world of any nation, and a policy of treating only acute conditions (no cancer screenings deemed "unnecessary" etc.) I have been misdiagnosed a number of times and was finally treated in the US for a major condition the doctors missed here in Denmark. We get a n…

I know someone in the US who is currently being treated for cancer. His chemo drugs have been hit by shortages and he has to beg his insurance company to approve of a different chemo drug for this life saving treatment.

While all systems have their issues, it cannot be undersold how absolutely captive American health is to the profit motive of private companies. If it does not leave room for profit in the US, we are told to die.

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#88

Post by nonameiguess »

zdragnar wrote: post #60
diamondap wrote: post #44

A few years ago, I talked to three retired federal law enforcement agents who had each spent 20+ years fighting the cartels that were bringing drugs into the US from Mexico and South America. All three felt betrayed by the US government. They said, essentially, "We put our lives on the line many times to try to stop the flow of drugs. Then the government turned around and basically gave the pharmaceuticals license to…

A friend of mine was a mechanic in the air Force and took a wrench to the knee. The VA basically prescribed him a giant bottle of benzos and told him to take them as needed. Young man laid up at home with nothing to do but sit on the couch playing video games and drink beer. Add in a big bottle of pain pills to take "as needed" and you've got an addict.

Because people form their impressions of what the world is like by continually reading anecdotes like this, I'd like to at least throw my own experience out there. I (not my friend) got out of the Army needing three spine surgeries in the span of 16 months, after years of increasingly worthless non-invasive treatments. This involved daily percocet for a very long time along with periods of time in which I couldn't do much beyond mindlessly watch television while falling in and out of sleep.

I did recover, though. Today, I run 40-50 miles a week, lift 6 days a week, work in software making five times what the Army ever paid me, haven't touched a painkiller in 7 years, and don't even drink.

Make of it what you will, but people are individuals and medical policy should reflect this. Pill mills are a problem but physicians deserve the judgment and discretion you should expect of someone we spend up to a decade training and licensing.

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#89

Post by nobodyandproud »

ethanbond wrote: post #25
nobodyandproud wrote: post #10

I see this as analogous to the Dust Bowl, where the politicians and coastal elite ignored or dismissed the growing problem until it was too big to ignore. - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1000-mile-long-sto... - https://mallhistory.org/items/show/274 100 years and more information than ever, yet we have’t figured out this out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem.

Are people ignoring it? Or do people just not know how to solve it? What would you propose as a solution?

> Are people ignoring it?

Every problem has a different solution, but our inability to mobilize and solve the problem before it becomes a crisis seems to share a common theme.

Namely that our representatives and government officials have chosen to ignore the problem; I feel journalists have played a large part in exposing the problem and even then it's been an uphill battle.

> Or do people just not know how to solve it? What would you propose as a solution?

The political will to treat our fentanyl and opioid addicts is sort of there but the funding is not. Right now governments have been battling the Sacklers in court and it seems our collective state and federal government isn't really winning.

I'll go back to the Dust Bowl: My fantasy is to bus all of the addicts to the people who need to see this non-stop. No violence.

Bring them to the state/Federal officials where they work of course, but I'd love to see them bused to near the Sacklers' home; and to their retreats of choice. Non-stop. Until there's nowhere for them to run except out of the country.

And the opioid-wealthy become pariah until they clean-up their own mess.

As an immigrant who never learned how to be politically active and am a bit old and crusty now, I wouldn't even know where to start; but it's a fun fantasy at least.

Re: Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis

#90

Post by aaomidi »

op00to wrote: post #53
diamondap wrote: post #44

A few years ago, I talked to three retired federal law enforcement agents who had each spent 20+ years fighting the cartels that were bringing drugs into the US from Mexico and South America. All three felt betrayed by the US government. They said, essentially, "We put our lives on the line many times to try to stop the flow of drugs. Then the government turned around and basically gave the pharmaceuticals license to…

Just a point - the same people who thought they were “saving” people with a drug war were destroying lives themselves over drugs that not so many years later are legal and accepted to possess. Somehow they’re not harmful anymore. It’s all BS.

The war on drugs is also just a much more active participant in harming people vs the drugs themselves.

The drugs aren’t making a conscious choice of destroying someone’s life. Those agents are. They’re by definition worse than the drugs (premeditated vs not).

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