Don’t tell the US government!
They’ll definitely insist that all pain relieving doses of cannabis be formulated with enough acetaminophen (a.k.a. paracetamol) to make the use of it ultimately destructive to your liver.
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Remember that billions of dollars are being spent to convince you that access to pain killers should be restricted.
I don’t think it’s wise believe any story that says someone was “addicted” because of testimony from unnamed sources. You should have very strong suspicions even when the sources are named! Addiction exists, and it’s a real problem, but the for-profit prison industry is spending big dollars to make you believe certain things about it - primarily, that painkillers should not be prescribed any more.
I have carried prescription opioids on my person for decades. During that time I have passed several pre-employment drug tests; only once was the test close enough to a migraine incident that I needed to produce my prescription. That’s because I’m not an addict, despite the fact that I need to carry these drugs 24x7x365.
Long ago, when I could get straight codeine with a phone call to my family doctor, I only used to fill a prescription for 20 pills every two or three years - but now that I can only get vicodin, with all that lovely acetaminophen toxicity and liver damage, I have to visit the doctor for a full physical at least once a year, and I actually have to get more pills, since I may need to take six or more at a time, even though the frequency with which I need them hasn’t really changed. And of course phone prescription renewal and transfer of prescriptions to pharmacies by phone is illegal now for strong painkillers, so I have to hand-carry hand-written prescriptions from drugstore to drugstore until I find one that can fill it.
But wait, there’s more!
My new doctor is refusing to renew my prescriptions. She says that “pain management is not a family doctor’s job”. She has referred me to a neurologist, and I have waited four months for my appointment now, despite being on a cancel waiting list for an entire hospital neurology department. I go Monday, and while I’m sure I’ll get meds eventually (I have a record of being hospitalized for the condition, after all) I’m going to wager that there will be lots of unnecessary expense and inconvenience involved - probably another brain MRI, for one thing.
So, if I run out of meds, what I am supposed to do? The lethal weapons that I’d be capable of using on myself are already locked up in such a way that I can’t unlock them unless I’m still sentient, so that option’s been blocked. But there’s a lot of heroin for sale just up the road in Murdertown… thanks to the crackdown on prescription painkillers.
This media blitz is not really about opioid addiction at all. That’s just the shiny PR wrapper. It’s about keeping the for-profit prisons filled and the heroin trade thriving.
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Or at the least, rather than making him deaf this time, paralyze his vocal cords instead.
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It still surprises me that so many people do not make a will. Nearly everyone has a few items of value to pass on, and/or a home or a bank account. And nearly everyone has a friend or a loved one who would be happy to be thought of by receiving a specific memento that may have meaning to both parties. I suspect the big stumbling block is that many people are so superstitious that they don’t want to contemplate their own demise, or making a will somehow forces them to accept that death could happen to them at any time. Surprise…it can.
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Shit. Is THAT why my new doctor seemed hesitant to refill my drugs? And when he did it was a 15 day supply?
Mother fucker. Look, guys, I have documented proof of my leg being fucked up for over 15 years. Chronic pain isn’t in my head. I am not fishing for pills. I am not selling them. I am not even taking anything that hardcore. Although I really think a muscle relaxer would help me at night, and thus far I have seen 2 drs and no one saying “Sure, let’s try it.”
So yeah. Little pissy on this issue too.
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If you have children, the reason to have a will is for the person who takes care of them to have immediate access to your funds, rather than having it all tied up in probate while there is a funeral to get planned and a lot of other upheaval that requires funds.
Edited to add that most people’s stuff doesn’t amount to much. My lawyer said to put post-it notes on the bottom of any valuables to indicate who should inherit it. We didn’t have anything worth including in the will.
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I assumed that since they wanted him to stay for 24 hours, they were going to admit him to the regular hospital, but they were out of private rooms. Every ER I can remember being in has had private rooms, but you don’t stay in the ER if you’re admitted, you’re moved to a regular hospital wing, in my experience.
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Yep, almost certainly. This has been building now for several years, basically since states started legalizing marijuana.
For me, there’s sumatriptan, which works if I’m awake when I get aura, and then I don’t need painkillers. It’s only when I wake up in the night with the migraine already going that I need them, because the sumatriptan only works if it’s taken early. People with pain issues that can only be managed with conventional painkillers, like yourself, are going to suffer worse than I am.
I can’t help but think this sort of thing would be far less likely to happen with a true single-payer tax-funded medical system and tax-funded prisons. I am actually big a fan of free and fair markets, but you can’t have free choice and fairness in these so-called marketplaces. It just doesn’t work for prisons or medical care, because the customer simply can’t shop around for the best jail or hospital.
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I was alluding to the fact that it suits the pharmaceutical companies to have access to cheap to make prescription opiates, rather than to have to spend a lot of R&D on much safer alternatives. Cannabinoids are potentially cheaper than opiates, and can also be concentrated to a degree for medical purposes by selective breeding.
Yes the system needs to be doubleplusunfucked, but we should be finger pointing at everybody who is profiting from this system. The for-profit prison system was one of the worst things that ever happened in the English-speaking world, but the criminalising of low-harm drugs and institutionalising of dangerous ones was another.
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In lieu of wasting any more bandwidth on emotion, speculation or opinion, here are two thoughts:
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We’re privileged to have records of the man’s extraordinary work, and the thing that ended it should be a catalyst for meaningful education and action instead of impotent punditry.
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To understand how Big Pharma and one Mexican cartel have systematically destroyed an entire generation of Americans, read “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic” - an exceptional work of journalism by Sam Quiñones.
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You’re not admitted until after 24 hours. Before that, you’re considered an outpatient. Even if you’ve had surgery!
Send Limbaugh lily-of-the-valley bouquets instead. The Victorians knew about that one.
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You can most likely buy codeine and related meds from overseas, i have a friend that buys most of her medication from russia and the quality is exactly the same as what you find in the US
My old boss used to make regular trips up to Canada for the express purpose of buying big bottles of codeine over the counter. Not sure if that’s still possible up there.
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It’s possible, even likely that painkillers have been overprescribed (because physicians are routinely paid to prescribe new drugs to their patients rather than use known effective solutions; that’s how the current system works, and there were a bunch of new painkillers produced in the last couple decades) but if there’s a cause to the problem, I’d say it was pain needing treatment.
Well, I’d argue that they shouldn’t. Opiates are fantastic for severe pain but they have their drawbacks (such as addiction, obviously, but there are others). If a physician is prescribing drugs for “unhappiness” that’s likely to make the problem worse, by spreading it to more people, rather than curing anything.
[quote]The ratio of effective to dangerous dosage for opiates is extremely low. In terms of that ratio, cannabis is probably the safest of all drugs - it is extremely hard to kill yourself with the stuff. This is just another example of governments being totally out of touch with reality - a real cynic might think that the pharmaceutical companies like a situation in which the medical profession can get people addicted to expensive prescription drugs.
[/quote]
It’s been interesting to see how medical cannabis is starting to focus on non-THC cannabinoids that weren’t very well understood while the government was more aggressively suppressing the demon weed. I know that recreational marijuana does nothing useful for my own condition; I tried that long ago. But I’ve been advised to try some of the CBD oil type preparations that are now available.
Having worked on testing of thermonuclear weapon delivery systems in my youth, I suspect any trade between my address and Russia would be noticed. They basically told me that the DoD would be watching me in my exit interview! But maybe I’m just paranoid, that was a long time ago.
Word.
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I carry a bottle of clonazepam everywhere I go. I almost never take one (20 lasted me two years) but it’s my safety blanket.
The hydrocodone is put away. It’s only for emergencies :D. The newest to the stable, gabapentin, has been a life changer for pain. It doesn’t treat acute pain, but long term pain.
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I’m going to ask the neurologist about that, since you’ve mentioned it several times. The thing that intrigues me about gabapentin is that it is apparently effective as an anti-convulsant for some epileptics (spastics to the Scots in the audience) and it’s currently believed that classic migraine is neurologically similar to epilepsy.
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My dad was admitted to ICU when he went in to the ER with pneumonia when he had late-stage cancer. They definitely did not wait 24 hours. I don’t think that’s a universal constant.
I was prescribed that for some nerve pain and it did nothing at all for me. Vicodin, on the other hand, does everything.
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I think @chgoliz is saying that for billing purposes you have to somewhere in the hospital for 24+ hours. I had a broken leg, which resulted in having surgery at a hospital. I was considered a “23-hour hold” or outpatient even though I spent the night in a hospital room with a roommate who had been there for several days.
