For another, related, account from 1999, see http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/1999-11-PumpReaderMail.html http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/1999-11-PumpReaderMai

For another, related, account from 1999, see http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/1999-11-PumpReaderMail.html http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/1999-11-PumpReaderMail.html : > My wife, The Doctor, is a board-certified addictionologist, in addition to being an internist, with a subspecialty in prescription drug addiction and signficant experience in running drug and alcohol treatment centers. > She has informed me that (1) most “enlightened” doctors are liberal with narcotics for those who have not been previously addicted and stingy with those who have been hooked, and (2) these doctors don’t know what the hell they are doing. ... > What about the danger of getting people re-hooked? If the medication level, no matter how high, is kept below the threshold of euphoria, the chances for re-hooking the patient are low. And if the patient does become hooked, there are programs and facilities that can handle that problem. > The worst part about asking the patient if he or she has previously been hooked is that patients not in recovery, who are likely to con you out of all the drug they can, are going to lie, while patients in recovery, who will use the pump responsibly, are going to tell the truth. Therefore, those addicts who are most likely to get in trouble with high doses will receive high doses, while the rest are left in significant pain. > In my own case, I wrote down on my drug history that I had once had a single methadone tablet. This was prescribed by my oncologist while I was recovering from cancer some 20 years ago. I took one tablet and concluded, based on the side effects, that I’d rather die than take another. Nonetheless, one of the seven anesthesiologists that took turns deciding, a couple months ago, how much narcotic the pump would supply me “today,” took this fleeting mention of methodone to indicate that I was a dangerous heroin addict who had been on methadone maintainance. So he did the only thing reasonable. He reduced my pain medication to almost nothing. This would suggest that even in 1999 the order was still your #1/#2.