4 ms·

I know everybody loves to hate on the Sacklers, but my life was dramatically better when I had access to opioids. Because of the "crisis" it has gotten really

I know everybody loves to hate on the Sacklers, but my life was dramatically better when I had access to opioids. Because of the "crisis" it has gotten really difficult to get them, even for people who need them. There are days when it's difficult to do much more than lie in bed in agony, but nobody beyond a small community of other pain sufferers seems to care. I'm at least grateful for the few good years I did get thanks to opioids, before they became radioactive. I hope some day we can swing the pendulum back toward compassion a bit. Everybody seems to want politicians and cops (DEA) deciding who should get them and who shouldn't. That may be an impossible mindset to change.

dogman144 6y ago
Why aren't you a candidate for legal thc? I'm genuinely interested as it comes up a lot as the new solution for former legitimate opioid users.
- BaronVonSteuben 6y ago
  I have used it extensively over the years but it doesn't work all that well for me and comes with really bad side effects (like making me super tired, which makes it really hard to work), making me insatiably hungry, etc. I've tried all kinds of different combos and it's a nice tool for the toolbox, but it's by no means a replacement for me. I might also add I don't enjoy being high at all. I really prefer to have a clear head, especially during the day while I'm working. I've tried strains that are supposed to be good for that but they don't really work on the pain.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    You had a "clear head" on opioids? You've got to be kidding, right?
  - ibarea23 6y ago
    What condition do you have?
- isbjorn16 6y ago
  As someone who uses both (irregularly, only as necessary), legal thc / CBD doesn't even remotely compare. I have to get so high to even approximate the pain relief from an opioid that I'm completely nonfunctional. I had my first back surgery at 18, my second at 25, and I've been staving off 5 separate herniated discs since. I'm in a good place now (barring literally today), but I can't stress enough how useless you end up being, mentally, to take enough thc/cbd to relieve your pain enough to be functional. Really, I just trade my disfunction of one type for disfunction of another type, which is only acceptable because sometimes you simply can't handle the pain. OP: I've had a lot of luck finding relief with tramadol. It may not be sufficient for your pain or work for you, but it's a schedule IV instead of a schedule II - my doctor can even call it in. In my experience, doctors don't treat you as a drug seeker if you suggest it - they almost seem relieved that you're not asking for the radioactive stuff. Just throwing it out as a possibility. For myself, for the rare times each year I need it now, it has been wonderful: most of the opioids were almost putting me into a frenzy - not really the right word since it wasn't as strong as the word frenzy implies, but I would get pretty amped up and anxious. Tramadol offers me relief but I stay fairly even keeled - I can even keep working, for instance, something I can't say I can accomplish when I'm using enough THC/CBD to achieve relief. I wouldn't drive on it or sign a contract, but I'd put it on par with having a couple of beers at lunch.
  - veb 6y ago
    Just a warning, Tramadol reacts very badly in some people. Like myself, just a single pill will cause me to have tonic-clonic seizures leading up to a grand-mal seizure later on in the day. Tramadol also has a bunch of shit in it, I feel like it's a 'dirty' drug. For example, it's very closely related to the chemical structures of antidepressants. This can be helpful, but not when you need to stop it. You also can't really take any serotonergic medicine either as you'd be at a very high risk of serotonin syndrome. Nobody wants that. Honestly, old and true medicines really do work. I'm not saying the Sacklers are awesome, they're fuckin'evil and didn't value human lives - but the drug works for those who need it. And Cannabis is not legal in New Zealand, at least yet. We'll find out on the 30th if it's going to be... (I have to be on it after burning my entire left arm, and chest with burning hot oil - I also educate myself on medicines as I used to work in said sector, and I do have seizures and Tramadol is well known to lower the seizure threshold very very fast)
kennywinker 6y ago
I hear what you're saying, but it feels like you should be placing your blame on the sacklers too - if they hadn't pushed opioids on people who didn't need them, fueling the crisis, then there would not have been this backlash you describe. Like, we shouldn't be mad at opioids, we should be mad at drug pushing profiteers.
- BaronVonSteuben 6y ago
  That's a reasonable point, although if they hadn't helped make doctors more comfortable with using them, then I may not have ever gotten them in the first place as they would be stingy with them like they are now. Hard to know where I would have landed.
  - ethanbond 6y ago
    “make doctors more comfortable with using them” is a bit of an understatement.
  - elipsey 6y ago
    TL;DR: I think it is reasonable to blame Purdue for the reduced access to opioids we are now stuck with. Purdue caused more addiction to occur, which in turn caused reduced access to the opioids that existed prior to the creation of Purdue's nuisance product. Also, perverse incentives caused by the patent and licensing system motivated them to make OxyContin unnecessarily addictive in it's formulation and dosing schedule, in order to engage in patent "ever-greening" of an existing substance. Oxycodone has been around for a long time, but was doesed and administered more safely in older products. Purdue did some pretty perverse things to support their patent and regulatory rationale for OxyContin. To gain approval as a superior and patent-able alternative to the other extant gerneric hydrocodone and oxycodone products, it was claimed to require less frequent (but larger) doses. The result was that large numbers patients found that when taken as directed it provided superior pain relief, followed by a return of pain, in conjunction with hours of opioid withdrawals until the next dose. Early on in the product's life cycle doctors were encouraged to increase the dose but not the dosing schedule when patients complained, in part because the alternative would have undermined the rationale for the existence of the product. Although this was probably an undesired side effect from the point of view of Purdue, they could hardly have designed a better way to cause drug addiction. Millions of people took this product and many became addicted. Purdue went far out of their way to publicize people as criminals rather than address the fundamental problem with the way the product was administered. It seems to be evidenced that the more effective administration schedules of other already existing products cause less addiction, so at the margin, Purdue caused many more drug addicts to exists than would have otherwise. If they had not done this, or had been willing to adequately address the problems, we would probably still have easier access now to the opioids that already existed. The problem has grown to such a scale that it is now very hard to "put the genie back in the bottle."
jimkleiber 6y ago
I both think that opioids should be more legalized/available and that if people break the current law, they should face consequences for doing so. If we have a punishment/deterrence-based society, then it seems like the deterrent is not working well for many large corporations. Giving a fine that is a tiny percentage of their money doesn't seem to penalize the behavior much, and more importantly, may not lead to behavioral change. I believe some people need to be held criminally liable and go to prison to stop some of the harmful behaviors. I think the challenge is that even if someone saves 100 lives, if they kill 1, they face criminal consequences. Maybe coming from the assumption we're supposed to do things to help people, I dunno.
bananabreakfast 6y ago
While you're clearly in pain and vindictive for lack of access to effective treatment, putting "crisis" in quotes like it's a manufactured epidemic with no real impact is extremely disingenuous. In 2018 ~130 people died every day in the US overdosing on opioids[1]. I'm sure they're effective for you but if people are not responsible enough to be trusted taking them without killing themselves then you might as well be arguing to legalize heroine for treatment as well. It would probably be even more effective. And for the record I do think it probably should be legal for treatment anyway. [1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdose-crisis https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdos...
- bredren 6y ago
  Just so this doesn’t come off like too radical an idea: legalization of all drugs has been a position of The Economist since 1989. “Legalize, Control, Discourage.” https://www.economist.com/leaders/1989/01/21/hooked-on-just-saying-no https://www.economist.com/leaders/1989/01/21/hooked-on-just-...
  - api 6y ago
    The majority of opioid deaths are due to fentanyl or cut opioids, something that would not exist if there were a regulated legal market.
- DanBC 6y ago
  OxyContin/oxycodone (30mg tablet) 2002 8.8 million pills 2011 781.5 million pills The US didn't experience a massive increase of numbers of people in pain.
  - devilduck 6y ago
    Are you sure? Maybe correlate those numbers with the number of victims of mass shootings who didn't die
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
heymijo 6y ago
I think that maybe then you too should be mad at the Sacklers. They intentionally and knowingly deceived the market that opioids were safe. Had they not done that maybe the opioid epidemic would not have happened and you could still have access to the medicine that you are grateful for. Please do read up on how horrible they are.
- dnautics 6y ago
  do you have a reference to just how bad they were? I'd like to learn more. This whole sackler thing has been scaring me shitless because as a biochemist thinking about going back into biochemistry, my brain runs around in circles about how badly a small bit of uncertainty could be turned around in circles to screw me over, even if I believed what I did was in the best interest of most people (like what happened to Merck + Vioxx).
  - heymijo 6y ago
    Prosecutors have been going after Purdue and the Sackler's for over a decade now. Forty seven states have sued Purdue pharma over the opioid crisis with twenty nine of those states specifically naming members of the Sackler family in the suits. So if you want primary documents, you have more than you can read. Here's an excerpt from a recent New Yorker article: The 2007 case was not supposed to end the way it did. For four years, prosecutors in the Western District of Virginia gathered evidence on Purdue, subpoenaing millions of documents. They found a widespread pattern of illegal misconduct in which Purdue systematically misled doctors (and the general public) about the risks associated with OxyContin. In September, 2006, the prosecutors detailed their damning evidence in a hundred-and-twenty-page memo, suggesting that the wrongdoing at Purdue was so pervasive, and so consistent, that it could have been authorized only by the company’s leaders. This memo, an internal government document, was not made public until August, 2019, when the Times published excerpts of it showing that the prosecutors had intended to bring felony charges against three top Purdue executives: Michael Friedman, Howard Udell, and Paul Goldenheim. The full memo, which I have reviewed, describes the Sacklers as “The Family” and notes that the company was owned and controlled by the brothers Mortimer and Raymond Sackler and their heirs. (The heirs of a third Sackler brother, Arthur, sold their interest in the company prior to the introduction of OxyContin.) The company “trained its sales representatives” to use “false and fraudulent” claims about OxyContin, the memo states. The prosecutors noted that the three executives they intended to charge “reported directly to The Family.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sackler-familys-plan-to-keep-its-billions https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sackler-familys...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
doggydogs94 6y ago
Apparently your pain and suffering is less important than getting the Sacklers.

dogman144 6y ago

Why aren't you a candidate for legal thc? I'm genuinely interested as it comes up a lot as the new solution for former legitimate opioid users.

BaronVonSteuben 6y ago
I have used it extensively over the years but it doesn't work all that well for me and comes with really bad side effects (like making me super tired, which makes it really hard to work), making me insatiably hungry, etc. I've tried all kinds of different combos and it's a nice tool for the toolbox, but it's by no means a replacement for me. I might also add I don't enjoy being high at all. I really prefer to have a clear head, especially during the day while I'm working. I've tried strains that are supposed to be good for that but they don't really work on the pain.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  You had a "clear head" on opioids? You've got to be kidding, right?
- ibarea23 6y ago
  What condition do you have?
isbjorn16 6y ago
As someone who uses both (irregularly, only as necessary), legal thc / CBD doesn't even remotely compare. I have to get so high to even approximate the pain relief from an opioid that I'm completely nonfunctional. I had my first back surgery at 18, my second at 25, and I've been staving off 5 separate herniated discs since. I'm in a good place now (barring literally today), but I can't stress enough how useless you end up being, mentally, to take enough thc/cbd to relieve your pain enough to be functional. Really, I just trade my disfunction of one type for disfunction of another type, which is only acceptable because sometimes you simply can't handle the pain. OP: I've had a lot of luck finding relief with tramadol. It may not be sufficient for your pain or work for you, but it's a schedule IV instead of a schedule II - my doctor can even call it in. In my experience, doctors don't treat you as a drug seeker if you suggest it - they almost seem relieved that you're not asking for the radioactive stuff. Just throwing it out as a possibility. For myself, for the rare times each year I need it now, it has been wonderful: most of the opioids were almost putting me into a frenzy - not really the right word since it wasn't as strong as the word frenzy implies, but I would get pretty amped up and anxious. Tramadol offers me relief but I stay fairly even keeled - I can even keep working, for instance, something I can't say I can accomplish when I'm using enough THC/CBD to achieve relief. I wouldn't drive on it or sign a contract, but I'd put it on par with having a couple of beers at lunch.
- veb 6y ago
  Just a warning, Tramadol reacts very badly in some people. Like myself, just a single pill will cause me to have tonic-clonic seizures leading up to a grand-mal seizure later on in the day. Tramadol also has a bunch of shit in it, I feel like it's a 'dirty' drug. For example, it's very closely related to the chemical structures of antidepressants. This can be helpful, but not when you need to stop it. You also can't really take any serotonergic medicine either as you'd be at a very high risk of serotonin syndrome. Nobody wants that. Honestly, old and true medicines really do work. I'm not saying the Sacklers are awesome, they're fuckin'evil and didn't value human lives - but the drug works for those who need it. And Cannabis is not legal in New Zealand, at least yet. We'll find out on the 30th if it's going to be... (I have to be on it after burning my entire left arm, and chest with burning hot oil - I also educate myself on medicines as I used to work in said sector, and I do have seizures and Tramadol is well known to lower the seizure threshold very very fast)

kennywinker 6y ago

I hear what you're saying, but it feels like you should be placing your blame on the sacklers too - if they hadn't pushed opioids on people who didn't need them, fueling the crisis, then there would not have been this backlash you describe. Like, we shouldn't be mad at opioids, we should be mad at drug pushing profiteers.

BaronVonSteuben 6y ago
That's a reasonable point, although if they hadn't helped make doctors more comfortable with using them, then I may not have ever gotten them in the first place as they would be stingy with them like they are now. Hard to know where I would have landed.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  “make doctors more comfortable with using them” is a bit of an understatement.
- elipsey 6y ago
  TL;DR: I think it is reasonable to blame Purdue for the reduced access to opioids we are now stuck with. Purdue caused more addiction to occur, which in turn caused reduced access to the opioids that existed prior to the creation of Purdue's nuisance product. Also, perverse incentives caused by the patent and licensing system motivated them to make OxyContin unnecessarily addictive in it's formulation and dosing schedule, in order to engage in patent "ever-greening" of an existing substance. Oxycodone has been around for a long time, but was doesed and administered more safely in older products. Purdue did some pretty perverse things to support their patent and regulatory rationale for OxyContin. To gain approval as a superior and patent-able alternative to the other extant gerneric hydrocodone and oxycodone products, it was claimed to require less frequent (but larger) doses. The result was that large numbers patients found that when taken as directed it provided superior pain relief, followed by a return of pain, in conjunction with hours of opioid withdrawals until the next dose. Early on in the product's life cycle doctors were encouraged to increase the dose but not the dosing schedule when patients complained, in part because the alternative would have undermined the rationale for the existence of the product. Although this was probably an undesired side effect from the point of view of Purdue, they could hardly have designed a better way to cause drug addiction. Millions of people took this product and many became addicted. Purdue went far out of their way to publicize people as criminals rather than address the fundamental problem with the way the product was administered. It seems to be evidenced that the more effective administration schedules of other already existing products cause less addiction, so at the margin, Purdue caused many more drug addicts to exists than would have otherwise. If they had not done this, or had been willing to adequately address the problems, we would probably still have easier access now to the opioids that already existed. The problem has grown to such a scale that it is now very hard to "put the genie back in the bottle."

jimkleiber 6y ago

I both think that opioids should be more legalized/available and that if people break the current law, they should face consequences for doing so. If we have a punishment/deterrence-based society, then it seems like the deterrent is not working well for many large corporations. Giving a fine that is a tiny percentage of their money doesn't seem to penalize the behavior much, and more importantly, may not lead to behavioral change. I believe some people need to be held criminally liable and go to prison to stop some of the harmful behaviors. I think the challenge is that even if someone saves 100 lives, if they kill 1, they face criminal consequences. Maybe coming from the assumption we're supposed to do things to help people, I dunno.

bananabreakfast 6y ago

While you're clearly in pain and vindictive for lack of access to effective treatment, putting "crisis" in quotes like it's a manufactured epidemic with no real impact is extremely disingenuous. In 2018 ~130 people died every day in the US overdosing on opioids[1]. I'm sure they're effective for you but if people are not responsible enough to be trusted taking them without killing themselves then you might as well be arguing to legalize heroine for treatment as well. It would probably be even more effective. And for the record I do think it probably should be legal for treatment anyway. [1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdose-crisis https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdos...

bredren 6y ago
Just so this doesn’t come off like too radical an idea: legalization of all drugs has been a position of The Economist since 1989. “Legalize, Control, Discourage.” https://www.economist.com/leaders/1989/01/21/hooked-on-just-saying-no https://www.economist.com/leaders/1989/01/21/hooked-on-just-...
- api 6y ago
  The majority of opioid deaths are due to fentanyl or cut opioids, something that would not exist if there were a regulated legal market.
DanBC 6y ago
OxyContin/oxycodone (30mg tablet) 2002 8.8 million pills 2011 781.5 million pills The US didn't experience a massive increase of numbers of people in pain.
- devilduck 6y ago
  Are you sure? Maybe correlate those numbers with the number of victims of mass shootings who didn't die
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

heymijo 6y ago

I think that maybe then you too should be mad at the Sacklers. They intentionally and knowingly deceived the market that opioids were safe. Had they not done that maybe the opioid epidemic would not have happened and you could still have access to the medicine that you are grateful for. Please do read up on how horrible they are.

dnautics 6y ago
do you have a reference to just how bad they were? I'd like to learn more. This whole sackler thing has been scaring me shitless because as a biochemist thinking about going back into biochemistry, my brain runs around in circles about how badly a small bit of uncertainty could be turned around in circles to screw me over, even if I believed what I did was in the best interest of most people (like what happened to Merck + Vioxx).
- heymijo 6y ago
  Prosecutors have been going after Purdue and the Sackler's for over a decade now. Forty seven states have sued Purdue pharma over the opioid crisis with twenty nine of those states specifically naming members of the Sackler family in the suits. So if you want primary documents, you have more than you can read. Here's an excerpt from a recent New Yorker article: The 2007 case was not supposed to end the way it did. For four years, prosecutors in the Western District of Virginia gathered evidence on Purdue, subpoenaing millions of documents. They found a widespread pattern of illegal misconduct in which Purdue systematically misled doctors (and the general public) about the risks associated with OxyContin. In September, 2006, the prosecutors detailed their damning evidence in a hundred-and-twenty-page memo, suggesting that the wrongdoing at Purdue was so pervasive, and so consistent, that it could have been authorized only by the company’s leaders. This memo, an internal government document, was not made public until August, 2019, when the Times published excerpts of it showing that the prosecutors had intended to bring felony charges against three top Purdue executives: Michael Friedman, Howard Udell, and Paul Goldenheim. The full memo, which I have reviewed, describes the Sacklers as “The Family” and notes that the company was owned and controlled by the brothers Mortimer and Raymond Sackler and their heirs. (The heirs of a third Sackler brother, Arthur, sold their interest in the company prior to the introduction of OxyContin.) The company “trained its sales representatives” to use “false and fraudulent” claims about OxyContin, the memo states. The prosecutors noted that the three executives they intended to charge “reported directly to The Family.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sackler-familys-plan-to-keep-its-billions https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sackler-familys...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

doggydogs94 6y ago

Apparently your pain and suffering is less important than getting the Sacklers.