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Are Americans just permanently zonked on powerful prescription painkillers 24/7? Hard to understand how doctors are legitimately prescribing enough of this medi
by WheatMillington 4y ago
Are Americans just permanently zonked on powerful prescription painkillers 24/7? Hard to understand how doctors are legitimately prescribing enough of this medicine to kill this many people.
- esaym 4y agoIt is a money maker https://youtu.be/KAJ-lTtt4yk https://youtu.be/KAJ-lTtt4yk
- scotty79 4y agoThat's the answer to all weird things in US. It makes someone money.
- floxy 4y agoI don't think most people are ODing from prescription abuse. It is fentanyl. I'd be interested to know how many are being poisoned by fentanyl-laced drugs, vs. fentanyl addicts who OD. Maybe that stat would be too hard to come by?
- ransom1538 4y agoYes. Its a deadly combo. Tons of cheap opioids flowing in from Mexico made with Chinese chemicals. There is no way to stop it. Flood the EU with tons of cheap fentanyl for a fair comparison.
- mysterydip 4y ago> There is no way to stop it. Isn't this what "the wall" and securing the borders was supposed to be for?
- kevviiinn 4y agoYea but that doesn't work because that's not where its coming through
- ch4s3 4y agoFentanyl makes a mockery of something like border control. You can fit an absurd number of doeses into a package the size of a standard letter envelope. The demand for Fentanyl is directly related to the vice grip of the DEA on prescription opioids.
- thinkmassive 4y agoCase in point: ~21 million doses worth found in a backpack of a guy trying to cross the border into Arizona https://twitter.com/BillFOXLA/status/1625936055047426048 https://twitter.com/BillFOXLA/status/1625936055047426048 > So far in FY23, we have seized over 476 lbs. of Fentanyl between the ports of entry along our southwest border. That's enough to kill 100 million people.
- lazide 4y agoThe wall was pure political theatre. Near as I can tell, it didn’t even slow down people on foot, and drugs are coming in via freight anyway.
- phpisthebest 4y agoI agree that it would not stop the drug trade... but the wall was never built so calling it "political theatre" is incorrect as well, as it was completely opposed by congress, and faced all kinds of lawsuits that stopped building several times. "The Wall" as envisioned by the proponents was never completed
- lazide 4y agoPlenty of parts of a wall for photo ops were completed! The whole thing doesn’t need to exist for political theater, in fact I’d say its lack of actual completion makes it even more a theatrical construction than if it actually was done!
- the_mar 4y agoBut for a lot prescription meds is the gateway drug to cheaper stuff
- ch4s3 4y agoYes and no. Very few people get started with a legitimate prescription. The typical opioid OD happens to someone who had other substance abuse and mental health problems and at some point started taking resold/stolen prescription opioids. Until fentanyl flooded the market most ODs were multi-substance and often(some 85%+ in places where coroners checked if memory serves) involved a LOT of alcohol. Now, its often just fentanyl, which is hard to dose correctly especially if you've recently tried to quit.
- the_mar 4y agodo you have source for that?
- narrator 4y agoA lot of people who die from fentanyl ODs are just casual drug users who are buying some other drug that happens to be laced with fentanyl. They die before they even know what's happening. It takes surprisingly little to kill someone and the illegal drug manufacturers are not that great with quality control when they cut the drugs they sell. I'm aware of people who used to take recreational drugs from time to time, but have quit completely because of the risk of accidentally overdosing because the dealers put fentanyl in almost everything now.
- whimsicalism 4y agoMost people who die from fentanyl ODs are opioid addicted. They are not getting it in other drugs - that happens (I test all my drugs for fentanyl) but is not any where near a majority of fentanyl deaths.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> test all my drugs for fentanyl How?
- baremetal 4y agoTangentially related but it has been my experience (I knew several people who died from opioid overdose) and also in literature[1] that overdoses frequently occur after rehab. Due to a drop in tolerance. "The clustering of the deaths from overdose in the group of patients who had successfully completed treatment is counterintuitive and illogical—unless it derives from loss of tolerance and consequent unpredictability of resumed heroin use." [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC153851/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC153851/
- hammock 4y agoCan confirm from my own firsthand observation. Sober people relapse, often after years of being clean, and misjudge how strong the stuff has gotten. Instant OD
- theRealMe 4y agoThat study is from 2003. Fentanyl is a much more recent phenomenon.
- WHYLEE1991 4y agoopiates definitely arent though.
- John23832 4y agoAnd it’s everywhere. It’s used as the “razzle dazzle” to add a kick to highs. Fake pills, heroin. There’s even been a rash of fentanyl overdoses in nyc from marijuana (as reported by the victims). It’s thought that mass produced weed is being grown with plant growth regulators. These make the plant grow big, dense buds. It also makes the plant produce less thc. It’s believe that the plants are then being dusted with fentanyl to replace the lost thc.
- r3trohack3r 4y agoAny references to the marijuana fentanyl problem? I’ve heard versions of this story repeated every few years since the mid 2010s but have never been able to find actual evidence for it.
- John23832 4y agoFrankly, it’s what I’ve heard my delivery weed service carriers. I live in nyc.
- whimsicalism 4y ago> It’s believe that the plants are then being dusted with fentanyl to replace the lost thc. Bah, apocryphal.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoBuuulllllshiiiiiiit. If anything, people would be adding things like jwh18 or newer stuff like delta 8 or 10
- John23832 4y agoBig Fent is more potent/cheaper than those.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoI know. It has been for a decade. But it doesn't make sense
- tnel77 4y agoI don’t mean to be a bummer, but walking around a Walmart in a lower income area shows you just how bleak the situation is in the United States. My wife and I recently went to a Walmart near a “not good area” and it was depressing. Just about everyone was overweight. Many were hobbling or needed the use of the electric scooters. Looking into their eyes often resulted in a near zombie stare that went right through you. People looked at Walmart’s relatively low prices in desperation and despair as they mentally tried to grasp how they’d be able to handle the bill for the mass produced garbage they were trying to buy to save money (compared to fresh meat and produce). My wife and I paid for our stuff and headed to our basic SUV (one of the nicest cars in the parking lot) and you could see rundown cars on the edge of the parking lot with blankets up to block the sunlight (aka homeless people). Things are not good over here. Edit: I didn’t directly address your question, but it’s all tied together. People are drugged up and just trying to get by. For many Americans, day-to-day life is nothing short of a nightmare.
- l33t233372 4y agoThis is patronizing hyperbole to the point of absurdity. Complaining about mass produced garbage instead of fresh meat and produce is just silly. Walmart has plenty of all three.
- tnel77 4y agoWalmart has all three, but it doesn’t mean that every customer can afford it. If you are broke, you are going to skip out on some of the healthier stuff.
- the_mar 4y agoI know it's not the same as opiates, but a crappy dentist in suburban Illinois once gave me a Vicodin prescription after a root canal. I was so confused
- baremetal 4y agoVicodin is indeed an opiate.
- seattle_spring 4y agoYour comment makes me confused. Vicodin is an opiate, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to prescribe for moderate pain stemming from a minor surgery or procedure. Presumably you were prescribed only a few days worth too. What was confusing about it to you? If anything, what worries me about this is that people are duped by the D.A.R.E.-like propaganda that suggests an addiction is likely from a prescription like this.
- the_mar 4y agoRoot canal (the garden variety kind) is not really dental surgery. Root canal is not painful after the procedure, because the procedure removes the nerve that feels pain. The injury to surrounding tissue is so minor (a hole of about 1.5mm in diameter for every nerve) that you don't really feel it. It is orders of magnitude less invasive than an extraction and some people don't need anything more than OTC Tylenol for those. I think it's quite obscene to prescribe Vicodin for a root canal. Because it won't do anything for the pain you don't actually have, but you will have other side effects. it's kind of like bringing a fighter jet to a knife fight if you will. People tend to trust doctors when they are prescribed things, so how many people ended up taking the Vicodin prescribed to them only to feel nauseated and drowsy and "out of commission" for a few days after the root canal? Hell, even you thinking that it's reasonable or necessary points to how far we've gone
- dfxm12 4y agoNot OP, but I was prescribed Percocet after dental surgery. I didn't even feel any pain, so I was a little confused about why I was automatically prescribed such heavy duty stuff when I didn't even need OTC Tylenol. Shortly after this, I found out I was living with a recovering addict (who got hooked on prescription pain killers after a knee surgery), so I ended up flushing the pills at their request.
- MavisBacon 4y agonot anymore, in certain parts of the country there is actually an issue of under-prescription of narcotics as an overreaction to the opioid crisis we are facing, with painkillers of course being the most difficult to access. Chronic severe pain patients and people with horrendous neurological conditions are going without the medications they need because prescribers are now terrified of heavy-handed medical boards that said, 20 or so years ago prescribers in the U.S. were in various ways made to believe that painkillers such as oxycodone were not addictive and were these magical drugs that helped pain patients regain their lives in ways we had never seen before. Ended up in so many homes, lots of excess prescription opioids hanging around and as a result a lot of people ended up abusing them. For a significant number of people that led to heroin use, and then fentanyl came into the picture in 2015ish; so that's how we got here. heroin on its own when injected isn't actually that easy to accidentally overdose on- fentanyl however, is.
- phpisthebest 4y ago2000 I had alot of tooth pain, I could get all kind of good pain killers for that... About a year ago I had an infected tooth... Nothing more than 600mg advil was on the table... take that at suffer through the rest of the pain...
- toomuchtodo 4y agohttp://archive.today/jbMxb http://archive.today/jbMxb https://www.vox.com/2020/4/15/21214734/deaths-of-despair-coronavirus-covid-19-angus-deaton-anne-case-americans-deaths https://www.vox.com/2020/4/15/21214734/deaths-of-despair-cor... (First link fixed)
- jareklupinski 4y agoclicking the first article and right after reading the words "Why Americans Are Dying From Despair", I got a modal with the title: "You've Run Out" with a graphic of a person's arm trapped in an elevator door https://i.imgur.com/fZp2eaG.png https://i.imgur.com/fZp2eaG.png
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- corbulo 4y agoIt used to be even worse. In 2012 the Opioid dispensing rate was 81 per 100 people. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html This doesn't even include antidepressants/ssri and such.
- akiselev 4y agoThat's 81 prescriptions dispensed per 100 people. If each prescription is for three months of pills that's 20 people-years of opioid dispensed per 100 people.
- corbulo 4y agoGood catch. Still nuts, especially if you layer it with antidepressants. Some states were 107< per 100 for the opioids. How does that impact the movement of the Overton window over the last decade+ I wonder?
- tpmoney 4y ago>For this database, a prescription is a new or refill prescription dispensed at a retail pharmacy in the sample and paid for by commercial insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, cash or its equivalent, and other third-party coverage. This database does not include mail order prescriptions. >For the calculation of dispensing rates, numerators are the projected total number of opioid prescriptions dispensed annually at the state, county, or national level. Annual resident population denominators were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau. Am I reading this right? They're counting scripts and then dividing that over the population? So if we imagine a state with a population of 12 people, one of whom is a chronic pain patient or cancer patient with an opioid prescription, that would show as 100 dispenses per 100 population (1 patient, 12 scripts)? That seems almost worthless as a metric.
- giantg2 4y agoSome people stay on the meds after a legitimate need. Some doctors misprescribe meds (in part misled by pharma reps) or are not aware of alternatives (if you're on some meds for 1 month it can take 1 year to safely taper off of them). There are some doctors who basically sell prescriptions (Netflix has a documentary on this). The biggest issue is the lack of hope. Most people turn to these because they're tired of their shitty life and don't see any realilistic hope for improvement. I mean, I got good grades, I worked hard, I'm an employed (not highly paid) software dev and I'm so disillusioned I completely get why some people turn to these things. I'm supposed to be at least in the top 25% of the current generation/my age group. Yet I feel like I'm barely making it to the same level that my parents were able to. Don't get me wrong, we aren't on assistance, we have good groceries, we have private/employer healthcare. But it's tough trying to save for retirement, healthcare, and stuff. There's no way 50% of the population will be able to retire at all, pay for Healthcare, etc as they get older or aren't able to work.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoIs it though? I remember having some opioids prescribed by dentist after a major procedure and I was on them for a week or two. Withdrawal was painful and I am saying that as a person, who dealt with bad headaches before. That was after 2 weeks. I can't even begin to imagine what people who have to take them longer ( surgeries, chronic pain and so on ). Those are still a useful tool, but the risk of addiction comes from several fronts and it is easy to get caught in a rather vicious circle.
- faddypaddy34 4y agoThe problem isn't pain killers it is massive quantities of fentanyl being brought into the country. Made worse by it being so cheap it is basically pressed into pill shape and sold as other less lethal substances like Xanax, Percocet, MDMA etc. People are also just selling it as cocaine. There have been several stories of people thinking they bought cocaine and overdosing because it was or contained fentanyl.
- turdprincess 4y agoIt's crazy how eager American doctors are to prescribe opioids. Over the last few years, Ive gotten narcotic painkillers for serious stuff like surgery, but also for more minor stuff like dental work or joint injections. In most of those circumstances I would take one or two of these pills and then be just fine with non-narcotic over the counter pain medicine. But every time, I am highly encouraged to take the narcotics "just in case" the pain gets bad.
- dns_snek 4y ago> But every time, I am highly encouraged to take the narcotics "just in case" the pain gets bad. Being unfamiliar with the actual practice, how much are you typically prescribed, days or weeks worth, maybe even more?
- turdprincess 4y agoDepending on the severity, its not unusual to get 8 doses for the most minor of cases, like a root canal.
- IllogicalLogic 4y ago[dead]