Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/21/heroin-philanthropy.html
…
6 Likes
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
21 Likes
You could say it’s time to sack the Sacklers.
12 Likes
Let’s not lose sight that this:
“and promoting the idea that any doctor who left a patient feeling pain was engaged in malpractice.”
isn’t necessarily wrong.
16 Likes
In this case the cure was worse than the disease.
9 Likes
I say, anyone up for Fall Guy Bingo?
5 Likes
But this case isn’t every case. I’m more than glad that these were around when my mom was dying of cancer.
13 Likes
/raises hand
Chronic pain sufferer, here. Neurological migraines (inherited from my father), neck injury (which introduced me to tension and cluster migraines), and fibromyalgia. I don’t like opioids at all, never have, but my doctors have consistently been resistant to prescribing any pain medication (I guess because you can’t “see” a migraine or fibromyalgia?) My fibro was so bad at one point that I was at risk of losing my job (I’d used up all of my sick and vacation leave, and still needed time off to manage my pain and nausea).
…And that’s how I started using marijuana ~ I have a friend that uses it recreationally, and I was entirely out of options. Thankfully I live in Oregon. At the time, it was quasi-legal and widely tolerated. Now it’s fully legal, and my daytime pain can be controlled with excedrin. I feel incredibly lucky to live in an area where this was an option for me… I have no doubt that my life would be ruined if I live in a non-MJ / pro-opioid area of the country.
Agree completely. Failure to help patients manage pain should not be tolerable, and there should be better options for patients facing this.
28 Likes
Good.
90 year old dad has been addicted to this stuff for 10 years.
He’s tried many times to break his addiction, to no avail.
He lost a daughter to drug addiction, (I try to remind him that this is the same thing)
but he doesn’t understand, he’s 90.
HIs doctor is evil, that company is evil, and this family may all rot in hell.
10 Likes
A year ago we learned that a neighbor had been using prescription opioids for several years to control chronic pain related to a jacked nerve in her lower back. I asked her if she had developed a tolerance and she said, “oh yeah, I have to take a heavy dose for it to work.” Then I told her about the overdose danger from ceasing and then resuming the opioid at the same high level. It was the first she’d heard of it. Her doctor was prescribing her horse-killer levels of opioid, without discussing the associated dangers.
My friend lost his fiance that way. She was prescribed opioids for chronic arthritis. She was on them for years, then off for a while. She resumed at the same high level as before, and died in her sleep.
11 Likes
Sure, there’s a small downside to neoliberalism’s ideal of “financial freedom” in the market place [/s]. As long as profiteers profit, we’re all supposed to believe that everything is just fine.
3 Likes
Are they on trial for tens of thousands of counts of first degree murder?
I think I get what you are saying but that statement goes way too far.
When I had a chest operation I felt fine that day, but the next day when the morphine wore off I felt really bad. It was probably for the best that I managed that by staying in bed and taking some barely-stronger-than-over-the-counter-anti-inflammatories and not by taking extremely strong painkillers that would make me feel like I was okay.
I can only imagine the harm done by doctors who react with insensitivity or disbelief to people with chronic pain. But sometimes acute symptoms need to be left to sort themselves out, or it is safer to manage them without giving high enough doses to completely alleviate them.
8 Likes
When I had gender surgery they forgot to turn on the morphine button- all night long -there’s bad and there’s really bad.
13 Likes
Ye gods & little fishes, I wish marijuana worked for pain relief for me.
Since the “opioid epidemic” means I can no longer get any opiates prescribed, my daughter will just have to drag my blind and screaming self to the car and drive me to the hospital, where they will immediately inject me with Demerol, and I’ll lose 12 to 16 hours. You scream, I scream, we all scream for codeine!
Because “opioid epidemic” means after 30+ years of safely using codeine, I now can’t be trusted with it. Suffering is good for people, right? Builds character.
6 Likes
A good friend who’s been living with chronic pain for years suddenly has endless problems getting painkillers that were always effective for him. I’ve been saying that the next great societal guilt trip will come in the next ten or twenty years when people will be surprised to learn (and then act enlightened) about how we overreacted to the opiod crisis and told chronic pain sufferers to go fuck themselves.
10 Likes
To quote my friend Pedro, “We’re Americans! We cannot abide any happy medium, we have to swing back and forth between ridiculous extremes! It’s our heritage!”
Sadists like PROP and the for-profit prisons are laughing all the way to the bank 
6 Likes
A ray of hope for those of you who missed the story last week:
1 Like
Especially because for many patients, 600mg of ibuprofen plus a couple of extra strength Tylenol will absolutely cut through the pain, without having to go to opioids at all. Like, you at least give the non-opium option a SHOT, right?
Before I had a root canal earlier this year and was in massive, awful pain, really probably the worst I can remember in my life, my dentist gave me the option of “special Tylenol” (with opioids) or to try the 600mg ibu plus two extra strength Tylenol. I took the latter approach, and I felt no pain, so long as I re-dosed ahead of the last round fading.
Can’t imagine how many millions of times similar scenarios have ensued over the years, and either the doctors, or patients, went straight to the harder stuff — and got hooked. F that noise.
2 Likes
And then there’s what you just said, holy shit, that sounds like probably the worst thing in the universe. 
Not to sidetrack the conversation but OMFG I hope you sued the shit out of them.
