I'm not what to think about all the headlines about opiod epidemic, especially among poor people in middle America.
Like many stories the media gets hot about, this doesn't ring true, in my experience, and for what I have understood for a long time.
Doctors have generally abhorred from prescribing true opium deriviatives, because of legal strictures, for a long time.
Codeine is the most consumer friendly, and perhaps the best cough medicine ever (not to be used too long, of course). But it's very hard to get, even from my fine doctor I only got hydrocodone for pain, an ambiguously effective medication in my experience. The first most serious pain I had...it was almost completely ineffective. However in a recent lesser pain incident, it did seem to work, so I was glad to have it as compared with nothing (in both cases).
A low cost public health clinic I know has a large sign saying has a large sign saying "Do not ask for Opiod Drugs." To replace opiods, new non-opiod and ineffective "pain killers" are prescribed which often have serious urinary implications. Poison!
Meanwhile, codeine can be had from the fanciest clinic in town. And with month lasting respiratory illnesses around, it can temporarily be life saving. Doctors should be sure that codeine is only used while temporarily needed, except when the alternative is worse.
In my opinion, Doctors who infrequently prescribe small amounts of opiods to anyone should not be hassled, and they have been hassled, for as long as I can remember.
So what's really going on here?
I figure it's a conspiracy to tighten the screws on opium derivatives and opiods still further, forcing people to buy fancy new poisons.
I suppose it's possible that in some other world I'm unfamiliar with, doctors prescribe opiods like candy with no oversight. It doesn't ring true in my experience, but possibly it does happen somewhere.
And that can be hyped out of proportion by the patent holders of fancy new poisons.
But this should not lead to another general crackdown on drugs.
Generally all drugs should be available by doctors to prescribe at their discretion, with reasonable but not vindictive or bureaucratic oversight. And especially natural drugs, like opium derivatives, cocaine, and marijuana. Instead of effective natural drugs that people have used forever, we have fancy overpriced and ineffective poisons.
The world is seeming more and more dysfunctional like the movie Brazil, and this is yet another way, both the way our medical system works and what we learn about it through the news.
My solution to heroin addiction? Make it legal, clean, free to all, so there's no black market. Free treatment with no stigma to anyone who wants to withdraw. Heroin addiction can be satisfied for decades without ill effect if the drug is free and clean. The scourge of heroin addiction is when people struggle so hard to keep getting it they give up on everything else, including food. And when the purity is so variable every dose is russian roulette. And when people are so depressed, they care for nothing else.
No form of drug use should by itself be illegal, or sale, only unregulated sales of regulated drugs.
Like many stories the media gets hot about, this doesn't ring true, in my experience, and for what I have understood for a long time.
Doctors have generally abhorred from prescribing true opium deriviatives, because of legal strictures, for a long time.
Codeine is the most consumer friendly, and perhaps the best cough medicine ever (not to be used too long, of course). But it's very hard to get, even from my fine doctor I only got hydrocodone for pain, an ambiguously effective medication in my experience. The first most serious pain I had...it was almost completely ineffective. However in a recent lesser pain incident, it did seem to work, so I was glad to have it as compared with nothing (in both cases).
A low cost public health clinic I know has a large sign saying has a large sign saying "Do not ask for Opiod Drugs." To replace opiods, new non-opiod and ineffective "pain killers" are prescribed which often have serious urinary implications. Poison!
Meanwhile, codeine can be had from the fanciest clinic in town. And with month lasting respiratory illnesses around, it can temporarily be life saving. Doctors should be sure that codeine is only used while temporarily needed, except when the alternative is worse.
In my opinion, Doctors who infrequently prescribe small amounts of opiods to anyone should not be hassled, and they have been hassled, for as long as I can remember.
So what's really going on here?
I figure it's a conspiracy to tighten the screws on opium derivatives and opiods still further, forcing people to buy fancy new poisons.
I suppose it's possible that in some other world I'm unfamiliar with, doctors prescribe opiods like candy with no oversight. It doesn't ring true in my experience, but possibly it does happen somewhere.
And that can be hyped out of proportion by the patent holders of fancy new poisons.
But this should not lead to another general crackdown on drugs.
Generally all drugs should be available by doctors to prescribe at their discretion, with reasonable but not vindictive or bureaucratic oversight. And especially natural drugs, like opium derivatives, cocaine, and marijuana. Instead of effective natural drugs that people have used forever, we have fancy overpriced and ineffective poisons.
The world is seeming more and more dysfunctional like the movie Brazil, and this is yet another way, both the way our medical system works and what we learn about it through the news.
My solution to heroin addiction? Make it legal, clean, free to all, so there's no black market. Free treatment with no stigma to anyone who wants to withdraw. Heroin addiction can be satisfied for decades without ill effect if the drug is free and clean. The scourge of heroin addiction is when people struggle so hard to keep getting it they give up on everything else, including food. And when the purity is so variable every dose is russian roulette. And when people are so depressed, they care for nothing else.
No form of drug use should by itself be illegal, or sale, only unregulated sales of regulated drugs.
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