7 ms·

The pervasiveness of OC provided by doctors is amazing. Even as of a year ago, I went into the hospital for back pain and left with a script for two fist fulls

• CydeWeys 10y ago
  I fractured my tibia recently and the urgent care gave me a short prescription for Percocet (which contains oxycodone like Oxycontin and also acetaminophen). I didn't end up picking it up as I don't have a car and mobility is understandably limited when you've fractured your tibia, but the past the first day the pain wasn't bad enough to need it anyway, and ibuprofen sufficed. And I am a wimpy person who does not do well with pushing through pain. I think we need to re-evaluate how often we're prescribing this stuff. Experiencing pain has a limited risk potential in most people, especially when the pain is linked to a temporary condition. The potential for addiction has nearly unlimited risk. Much better in my opinion for someone to suffer through temporary pain using over-the-counter pain meds than risk throwing your life away to drug addiction.
  • tew28 10y ago
    In a similar vein, I got an entire bottle of vicodin prescribed to me after having Lasik surgery. There was virtually no pain, merely discomfort similar to having a dirty contact lens in your eye, which went away after a day. I never used any of the vicodin.
    • davidw 10y ago
      I got some of that crap years ago. I felt good for about a half an hour, then got really nauseas, which is not something you want after surgery. Switched to ibuprofen. Pre surgery morphine had the same effect. I am not a fan of opioids.
      • rblatz 10y ago
        I'm the same way. After watching a friend deal with an opioid addiction I feel lucky to have that problem.
        • CydeWeys 10y ago
          I'm fortunate to have the same problem with alcohol. I can get up to drunk (though I won't feel 100% the next day), but anything beyond that stage and I start to feel ill. Especially back in college, I remember other students regularly getting to stages well past drunk (e.g. "wasted", "trashed", "black-out", etc.), and enjoying it, but I only ever did a few times and was always completely miserable. In the end it was just my body protecting itself from the stupidities of the brain running it.
    • ssmoot 10y ago
      I don't get this mentality at all. I would guess a majority of adults in the US have had Vicodin or similar and I don't know anyone personally who ever got addicted. In some it causes nausea. You don't like it, fine. But I don't understand how people can be so pro marijuana on one hand, and so anti-opiates on the other. It's pain. It's not noble to suffer needlessly. It's complete BS that it's harder for a dentist to prescribe a dozen Vicodin after a root canal these days. Or that many doctors will try to pass off 800mg of ibuprofen as a substitute for Vicodin for throwing you back out. That turns a couple of days of "be careful and taken it easy" into a couple of days of laying around on the couch in pain instead. These drugs are inexpensive, very effective for short term pain management, and the vast majority of people have mild to no side effects, and almost no one has an addiction issue from using them. It feels like the modern equivalent of Reefer Madness.
      • jonknee 10y ago
        > But I don't understand how people can be so pro marijuana on one hand, and so anti-opiates on the other. It's probably the hundreds of thousands of dead people from opiate overdoses vs the 0 dead people from marijuana overdose. > I would guess a majority of adults in the US have had Vicodin or similar and I don't know anyone personally who ever got addicted. You almost certainly know someone who has been addicted, you just didn't know. It is shockingly common.
        • _acme 10y ago
          Is there a higher rate of opioid addiction amongst opioid users than marijuana addiction amongst marijuana users?
          • Implicated 10y ago
            I can't comment on that, but I'd be confident in saying the rate of death is higher~
          • smileysteve 10y ago
            One of these is not like the other, opioids cause a clinical chemical dependency very quickly (as mentioned by the article, if you 12 hour dose doesn't last the full 12 hours) while the [chemical dependency of marijuana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_use_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_use_disorder) is much more subtle.
  • DanBC 10y ago
    > Experiencing pain has a limited risk potential in most people, especially when the pain is linked to a temporary condition. People living with long term pain are at increased risk for death by suicide. That doesn't mean we should just hand out opiates (which should not be used for chronic pain), but that we should take pain relief a bit more seriously. Living in pain sucks.
    • biesnecker 10y ago
      "Especially when the pain is linked to a temporary condition." I think that's the important point in the original comment.
      • CydeWeys 10y ago
        Most of the responses to my post have argued against various incorrect interpretations of it, not what I actually said. It's frustrating. Thank you for your reading comprehension.
    • notsotrue 10y ago
      I illegally use marijuana, not for the pain relief, it's not any more effect in my case than a bottle of Jack. But it gives me a pocket of time where I can just feel okay, mentally, knowing that I will never live another day without pain. The medical community focuses too much on symptom/treatment, and not enough on quality of life. I'm not saying that marijuana is an answer here, and I completely accept anyone who says I'm just using my pain as an excuse to get high, but it lets me feel emotion again, something you wrap up so tight in order to deal with the pain, you forget how to laugh and cry.
      • gregd 10y ago
        I'm sorry that it's illegal for you (it's not here in Oregon). I'm hopeful that we are on the verge of widespread legalization and I'm hopeful that you will, one day soon, enjoy all the benefits of it's legalization. Hang in there...
      • goldfeld 10y ago
  • GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
    They gave me percocet after my appendectomy. I really only needed it the first day after the surgery, and then to get to sleep the next two days. I think I took 4 or 5 of the big 'ol bottle of pills they gave me.
  • hackuser 10y ago
    > Experiencing pain has a limited risk potential in most people, especially when the pain is linked to a temporary condition While I may have agreed with this years ago, I'm pretty sure the research shows otherwise. Also, I'm not sure why pain is considered less important than other medical outcomes. For example, would you rather live in constant pain or lose a pinkie finger? I'd lose the finger and get on with my life.
    • CydeWeys 10y ago
      You seem to have glossed right over my use of the word "temporary". Does it suck that my tibia is fractured? Yeah. It's going to heal though. I sure as hell would not rather lose my foot for the rest of my life than wait for this to heal, just the same as I would rather deal with some pain now than risk a life-altering addiction to opioids. So to answer your hypothetical, yes, I absolutely would rather deal with some temporary pain and get on with my life in another week than lose a body part for the rest of my life. Who would make the other choice?!
  • _acme 10y ago
    Do you have any support for your claim that "[t]he potential for addiction has nearly unlimited risk."? Given that the majority of the population has been prescribed an opioid at some point (wisdom teeth removal, broken bone, etc.) and yet hasn't developed an "addiction", it seems as though the opposite of your claim would be true.
    • CydeWeys 10y ago
      Let me clarify my point. Let's say you just have an every day simple bone fracture (that didn't pierce your skin, so there's no risk of infection). You're almost certainly going to be fine. Contrast with getting hooked on opioids and entering a downward cycle of addiction -- the potential outcome there is the very loss of your life, with a higher chance than losing your life from a simple bone fracture. A lot of people die from opiate overdose every year in the United States; it's actually a few thousand more than from being murdered with a gun. http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html The problem with opiate addiction is that a lot of people are introduced to it through benign means, like starting off with a prescription from their doctor, or their friend giving them some for a legitimate pain-related reason. The gateway drug argument for weed is bunkum, but the gateway drug argument for some opioid use sometimes leading to more opioid use is very real, and is borne out with the statistics. The CDC has lots of information you can read. It's the biggest and deadliest drug epidemic in the US right now.
• manyxcxi 10y ago
  It's kind of scary how quickly doctors seem to prescribe it. I've had a doctor prescribe me some for everything from the flu to a mild ankle sprain. That being said, I always used to wonder if it was because I can't take any NSAIDs- it's acetaminophen or nothing for me. This usually means where they could get away with a big dose of Ibuprofin for pain and anti-inflammatory I wind up with oxycodone and prednisone. Which means I usually just gut it out after the first day or two.
  • ghaff 10y ago
    And acetaminophen has its own set of problems. It's at least a reasonable question whether it would have been approved as an over the counter drug had its level of liver toxicity been known at the time.
    • snsr 10y ago
      It's extremely toxic - opioids are a much safer option.
• wpietri 10y ago
  I think this is a natural outcome of a system where drugmakers can spend billions on advertising, marketing, and sales reps. Those are three activities with basically no ethical standards; their only job is to make the graph go up and to the right. My solution: ban all of that. Let doctors learn about new drugs via means funded by the doctors themselves. Before the Internet, that would have been difficult. But now you can imagine specialist medical journals, or special AMA committees. Manufacturers would still try to manipulate that, but doctors wouldn't be grossly outgunned.
• twic 10y ago
  It seems to be very rare to prescribe opioids for self-administration in the UK. One friend of mine was given some sort of opioid (i forget which) after having surgery on his leg. But for everyone else, diclofenac seems to be the thing that GPs like to spray everywhere.
• digler999 10y ago
  >The pervasiveness of OC provided by doctors is amazing. I've also heard just the opposite: dr's being afraid to prescribe them or being skeptical of patients' claims of pain out of fear they are just trying to score some pain pills.
• GordonS 10y ago
  'fist fulls' is a rather strange unit of measurement for pills!