I agree with a bunch of your point, but I want to contest one thing - opioids are not necessarily safe by following your doctor's guidelines. There's not (as f

I agree with a bunch of your point, but I want to contest one thing - opioids are not necessarily safe by following your doctor's guidelines. There's not (as far as I've found) currently any consistent threshold for how much of a given opioid you have to take for how long to develop an addiction. Some people might be able to take a high dose for an extended interval and not blink. Some people might take a much lower dose and have a very bad time indeed. (For that matter, I've known some people who got IV opioids with no effect. Biochemistry is wild.) So I don't think it's reasonable to argue "opioids are safe if you follow the guidelines" and "OTC pain meds are unsafe [if you ignore the guidelines]" - both have risks that you can try to mitigate by following the guidelines given, but unknown factors can result in it still having negative outcomes.