so, I can first hand speak to the fact that there is an opium epidemic in this country. For too long doctors have just prescribed them willy nilly, with no real repercussions. I don't think current administration should be the ones dealing with it, that's pretty terrifying, we know republicans way of treatment is prison time. I can also say that there is a way to treat this disease. It's very expensive right now, but I can tell you as someone who has gone through it and is now completely opiate free, it does work. It's called suboxone. You take suboxone and month by month you ween yourself down until you just give it up. I was able to come completely off it, something 3 years ago I would have told you was impossible. Sure I had some minor withdrawal symptoms but all in all it wasn't that bad. However I'm sure that in the minds of the current administration treatment means a jail cell. A place where it's easier to get narcotics than the street.
Congratulations on your recovery. I'm sure it must be a very difficult thing to deal with. I think it's fairly simplistic and not accurate to blame the current Administration for the issue going on in this country regarding opiate addiction. And I think you will find enough people in the mental health field who will disagree with one another regarding treatment so again, blaming this administration's approach is short-sighted. While you may have been successful with the use of Suboxone, it is a fact that any pharmaceutical treatment is something that needs to be tested against large populations, not just individual stories. The problems with Suboxone are not limited to but include the fact that some 60% of users drop out of using it within 6 months, many opioid addicts have mental health comorbidity which Suboxone does not address, and a fair amount of opioid addicts need to continue Suboxone and or methadone on a permanent basis which can cost upwards of $400 to $500 a month. I will admit I don't have a lot of faith in the successful recovery of a very large percentage of opioid addicts. There is too high of a recurrence of addiction and implications for long-term health effects. I think we need to do more to focus in on the front end of the problem. We need to understand why people become addicted and what we can do to prevent that as opposed to continuing to push one narcotic to treat another.
Thank you, feels good to be free of that shit. I don't blame the current administration for the epidemic. I know it's not anyone's fault It happened, I just don't have confidence in their ability to combat it properly. You're right about the percentages being low. You have to really want it. And I really wanted it. It started out with Tramadol, I was told it was non narcotic, non addictive by my doctor. That was a load of bull. And when the doctor stopped I started taking any opiate that wasn't heroin I could find. 2 years ago I went to a suboxone doctor because I was tired of the chase. And I just said fuck it im done and quit and the withdrawals sucked but weren't nearly as bad as what I have experienced in the past. It works but you have to have a doctor that cares (hard to do) and I think there should be incentives for getting patients clean. My doctor cared, he was addict himself, almost lost his practice. But he drug tests for everything. You fail enough you get kicked. It can be done. I used to think it couldn't.
They frighten me, that was actually one of my motivators. I have zero urges to take opiates too. It's strange, I've never hated something so much.
Cograts on getting through it. I hope you are able to stay clean. There is an opiate epidemic in this country. It's not anybody's fault unless you blame the drug cartels. To answer vball about finding out why people get addicted to drugs the answer is easy. The drugs make you feel good. At least at first. No policy by any politicians will solve the problem. Some users should be in jail. Not because of their drug use but because of the crimes they commit to support their habit. And some drug addicted people should never see the inside of a jail cell. Why do some people get addicted and some drug users can take it or leave it? I don't know. Every now and then I'll pop a Lortab or 2 or even something stronger if it comes my way just to feel good and not because I'm in pain. Then it could be months before do it again. Maybe because I'm aware that that class of drug is physically addicting. Cocaine isn't physically addicting but I have seen lots of people fuck up their lives with it. Could say a lot more but I'm sleepy.
Happy for you that you kicked the habit. As far as the overall opiate problem...The libertarian in me says do what you want to do to yourself but don't come complaining when shit goes bad. I don't feel it is societies requirement to fix a problem you created.
In the recent past it was easy enough to get an oxycodone prescription for pain management. People were walking around as "legal" addicts. Then it became very hard to get that prescription refilled. Then people turned to heroin. Now heroin is spiked with fentanyl. This is a death sentence. Some studies say that 80% of new heroin users were prescription opioid users. The Mexican Drug Cartels would like to thank the Pharmaceutical and Medical industry for providing them new clients.
Some people walk into the world of opioid addiction on their own, some don't even realize it till they can't get their prescription filled anymore. One whistleblower at a pharmaceutical company called INSYS Therapeutics told Fusion that she was encouraged to mislead insurance companies to get their fentanyl drug, Subsys, covered. “It's real simple: It's only FDA approved for cancer patients with breakthrough cancer pain. If you don't have cancer, and breakthrough cancer pain, no insurance company is going to pay for this medication,” whistleblower Patty Nixon told us. But most -- 90 percent -- of the patients referred to Nixon and her colleagues for Subsys sales were cancer-free, she said. “When 10 percent of the patients’ charts that came over or less were cancer patients, that's not a lot of money. Nobody's going to get rich off of that,” she said. “But you have this whole other world of everybody. That ‘my back hurts’ money, ‘my knee hurts’ money,” said Nixon. The solution, she said, was for company reps to tell insurance companies that patients had cancer when they did not. According to more than a dozen INSYS employees Fusion spoke with, the company has pushed doctors to prescribe their drugs off-label for patients and HAS EVEN PAID KICKBACKS TO MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS to get them to prescribe more. The company has faced investigations in six states, and settled for $1.1 million without admitting wrongdoing in a case in Oregon. Only 2.4 percent of all Subsys prescribed to patients from 2012 to 2015 was prescribed by cancer doctors, Fusion has learned from medical data firm Symphony Health.
I fully understand the brain chemistry aspect. I was talking more about how the process begins, with pain management, prescription meds, and the lack of oversight by the medical professionals and the lack of education among patients. Just like with alcohol, there can be a genetic predisposition. Are parents telling their kids what their personal risk factor could be? And as I mentioned, what other psych disorders are in place which make the diagnosis and potential addiction more likely? I can't say I understand. I have an extreme sensitivity to any pain meds. Even a motrin with codeine or half a vicodine will make me violently ill. I'd rather deal with the pain, and don't need the feel good part. Opioids like oxy can become addicting after just 4 days. A refill should pretty much never happen. I agree with the heroin....it's also cheaper than oxy or other pain meds. And yes, fentanyl is becoming a huge death sentence. I don't know if it's as difficult to get oxy scripts as it used to be. There are some 300 million prescriptions for opioids in the US....almost enough for every single American. People doctor shop and the system isn't in place everywhere to identify them. In Orange County, teen deaths from opioids have gone through the roof. Lots of the kids get started after a sports injury surgery thing or bumping in to mom's medicine cabinet. Anyone who gets a prescription needs to have a partner/parent/whatever, who helps in the monitoring process. It's a very sad and dangerous problem.
