7 ms·

I was in the care of a pain clinic when the fire hose was abruptly shut off. I wasn't being given oxycontin, but I still suffered from the sudden change. I went

I was in the care of a pain clinic when the fire hose was abruptly shut off. I wasn't being given oxycontin, but I still suffered from the sudden change. I went from sustainable maintenance to a drug that gave me serious side effects, but the doctors refused to listen. Even when a sleep study objectively showed the damage the buprenorphine was doing, I was told it's that or nothing. The doctors were terrified of new scrutiny of their prescription activity, so they just cut people off. Do no harm was destroyed by the knee jerk reaction by the government. Now, my poor wife is in constant debilitating pain from hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos but gets treated like she's drug seeking. While multiple joints are dislocated. I wish everyone who made decisions that led to this mess would suffer what my wife suffers, and get treated the same way by the medical establishment.

Der_Einzige 3y ago
The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them. I’ve had similar experiences with them not giving me proper painmeds are having all 4 of my wisdom teeth removed. They gave me 2 weeks of Tylenol #3 and some homeopathic bullshit and expected that to be good enough. Luckily my stepdad is a serious medical patient with lots of the good stuff, but it’s bad when I’m raiding my own parents pill closet to get any sort of relief after that many wisdom teeth came out all at once.
- itsnotafight 3y ago
  > The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them. I can see the argument here morally (and I agree with it), but in practice I know far more people negatively affected by drug addictions and drug addicts than I know people unable to get pain management medication they need. I imagine my experience may be typical, and so I am unsurprised the pendulum has swung so far.
  - at_a_remove 3y ago
    You'll pardon me for saying something that sounds a little "woo," but what will enlighten you the most is regarding Group B (who get opioids or benzos or whatever and suffer addiction) as a subset of Group A (who need treatment and medication but aren't getting it), namely that Group B is not getting something in their lives which they desperately need. Then you may see the unitary flaw in the system, at perhaps a larger scale, wherein people are not receiving what they need. One "right-sized" problem, not two problems. Why addiction, or better, why addiction now, what has caused the rise in such? Whatever that need was, were it met, would prevent addiction and we might then cease adding yet one more special of lenses, mirrors, and films to our ever-evolving panopticon, one more trackable in the Salesforce of the Surveillance State. We need to look at some reasons as to why people can see, say, Tranq in Philadelphia and say, "That looks like my best option, there."
    - itsnotafight 3y ago
      I don’t disagree that addiction indicates a lack of something broadly related to “care”. I just take issue with claiming “it is necessarily better that people in pain receive care, and addicts do what addicts do”. If this is indeed a spectrum (certainly debatable), with increased access definitionally increasing addiction, the argument that one side of the spectrum is strictly better is wrong.
  - tpmoney 3y ago
    One question to ask yourself though is whether you're experience both confirmation bias and a bias brought about by visibility and/or age. If you're younger, you're less likely to know people with conditions that require pain management. Likewise the people around you suffering from such conditions might not be open about it because either they've already been told they just have to suck it up and live with the pain, or because they've learned that complaining/being assertive about their pain is a good way to get labeled an addict and get even worse treatment.
    - itsnotafight 3y ago
      I was arguing that such a complaint will fall flat with many people if they share the same general experience as me. Not that it’s “objectively” true or false, assuming you can find something objective to measure. In fact I don’t think you can find something useful to measure objectively, and will necessarily fall back on subjective arguments about what is better, more important, more moral.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  I don’t live in your skin, but I had all of my wisdom teeth extracted under local anesthetics without sedation. And I never even needed an NSAID. Maybe it hurt you that bad, but it’s not par for the course.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    You don’t and your judgement of someone else’s pain is not relevant to this thread or respectful and is the exact line of thinking that leads to people’s pain not being taken seriously.
    - devilbunny 3y ago
      And if we take pain “seriously” and give opioids for what should be minimal pain, we are facilitating addiction. I’m not judging the pain, only the response of giving a prescription off the bat.
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    > I don’t live in your skin You should have stopped there.
    - devilbunny 3y ago
      When someone claims they need two weeks of opioids for postoperative pain, it is relevant to point out that it is abnormal.
  - BytesAndGears 3y ago
    That’s great for you. My partner was also not given anything when her wisdom teeth were removed. As the dentists anesthetic wore off, on the drive home, she started crying, then screaming as we pulled into the driveway. I got her in bed and gave her Tylenol (dentists recommendation), but she was crying, curled up in a ball, unable to move and barely talk, couldn’t drink water, just grasping her legs and suffering with tears streaming down her face. Luckily, when I called the dentist back and frantically explained the situation, they let us get an opioid. She took a minimal amount, and was able to function normally. She only used a few pills in total over the course of a couple days, but it prevented absolute heartbreaking agony. So that’s great that it worked for you. But your case has no bearing on somebody in the other situations either, so you don’t need to bring it up as a gotcha.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I mentioned this elsewhere, but I had wisdom teeth out recently, and took ibuprofen and nothing else (they did give me a prescription for a heavier-duty NSAID, but from past experience those are no fun). It was _fine_, there was some pain, but that’s par for the course. Opiods seem to be treated as almost essential for dental surgery in the US, and as a rare escalation path elsewhere.
  - anotherhue 3y ago
    Same experience. No doubt there will be exceptions but prescribing them as standard seems like negligence.
- dyslexit 3y ago
  > The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them. How do you measure that? Opioid overdoses accounted for at least 72,800 deaths last year [0] and there are countless more addicts out there whose entire lives are ruined because of that addiction. Many of those people, if they ever recover, will never take opioids again for any real medical pain relief like you did for your wisdom teeth because of the very real risk of relapse. Additionally, opioid withdrawal is, according to almost everyone who's gone through it, is one of the worst experiences you can feel. I'm not taking the side that it definitely doesn't outwheigh the need of those who genuinely need them. On the whole I actually probably agree with that. But stating that so confidently and ignoring the very real pain, lost lives, and broken families caused by opioid addiction because you had your wisdom teeth pulled and wanted opioids feels pretty dismissive and not a serious argument. [0]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7226a4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7226a4.htm
  - polski-g 3y ago
    How many millions of people use opioids and do not abuse them, nor get addicted?
    - dyslexit 3y ago
      I don't know, but even if I did you're making a weak argument. You're comparing temporary pain relief for lost and destroyed lives.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them. I’ve had similar experiences with them not giving me proper painmeds are having all 4 of my wisdom teeth removed. They gave me 2 weeks of Tylenol #3 and some homeopathic bullshit and expected that to be good enough. Luckily my stepdad is a serious medical patient with lots of the good stuff, but it’s bad when I’m raiding my own parents pill closet to get any sort of relief after that many wisdom teeth came out all at once.

itsnotafight 3y ago
> The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them. I can see the argument here morally (and I agree with it), but in practice I know far more people negatively affected by drug addictions and drug addicts than I know people unable to get pain management medication they need. I imagine my experience may be typical, and so I am unsurprised the pendulum has swung so far.
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  You'll pardon me for saying something that sounds a little "woo," but what will enlighten you the most is regarding Group B (who get opioids or benzos or whatever and suffer addiction) as a subset of Group A (who need treatment and medication but aren't getting it), namely that Group B is not getting something in their lives which they desperately need. Then you may see the unitary flaw in the system, at perhaps a larger scale, wherein people are not receiving what they need. One "right-sized" problem, not two problems. Why addiction, or better, why addiction now, what has caused the rise in such? Whatever that need was, were it met, would prevent addiction and we might then cease adding yet one more special of lenses, mirrors, and films to our ever-evolving panopticon, one more trackable in the Salesforce of the Surveillance State. We need to look at some reasons as to why people can see, say, Tranq in Philadelphia and say, "That looks like my best option, there."
  - itsnotafight 3y ago
    I don’t disagree that addiction indicates a lack of something broadly related to “care”. I just take issue with claiming “it is necessarily better that people in pain receive care, and addicts do what addicts do”. If this is indeed a spectrum (certainly debatable), with increased access definitionally increasing addiction, the argument that one side of the spectrum is strictly better is wrong.
- tpmoney 3y ago
  One question to ask yourself though is whether you're experience both confirmation bias and a bias brought about by visibility and/or age. If you're younger, you're less likely to know people with conditions that require pain management. Likewise the people around you suffering from such conditions might not be open about it because either they've already been told they just have to suck it up and live with the pain, or because they've learned that complaining/being assertive about their pain is a good way to get labeled an addict and get even worse treatment.
  - itsnotafight 3y ago
    I was arguing that such a complaint will fall flat with many people if they share the same general experience as me. Not that it’s “objectively” true or false, assuming you can find something objective to measure. In fact I don’t think you can find something useful to measure objectively, and will necessarily fall back on subjective arguments about what is better, more important, more moral.
devilbunny 3y ago
I don’t live in your skin, but I had all of my wisdom teeth extracted under local anesthetics without sedation. And I never even needed an NSAID. Maybe it hurt you that bad, but it’s not par for the course.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  You don’t and your judgement of someone else’s pain is not relevant to this thread or respectful and is the exact line of thinking that leads to people’s pain not being taken seriously.
  - devilbunny 3y ago
    And if we take pain “seriously” and give opioids for what should be minimal pain, we are facilitating addiction. I’m not judging the pain, only the response of giving a prescription off the bat.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  > I don’t live in your skin You should have stopped there.
  - devilbunny 3y ago
    When someone claims they need two weeks of opioids for postoperative pain, it is relevant to point out that it is abnormal.
- BytesAndGears 3y ago
  That’s great for you. My partner was also not given anything when her wisdom teeth were removed. As the dentists anesthetic wore off, on the drive home, she started crying, then screaming as we pulled into the driveway. I got her in bed and gave her Tylenol (dentists recommendation), but she was crying, curled up in a ball, unable to move and barely talk, couldn’t drink water, just grasping her legs and suffering with tears streaming down her face. Luckily, when I called the dentist back and frantically explained the situation, they let us get an opioid. She took a minimal amount, and was able to function normally. She only used a few pills in total over the course of a couple days, but it prevented absolute heartbreaking agony. So that’s great that it worked for you. But your case has no bearing on somebody in the other situations either, so you don’t need to bring it up as a gotcha.
rsynnott 3y ago
I mentioned this elsewhere, but I had wisdom teeth out recently, and took ibuprofen and nothing else (they did give me a prescription for a heavier-duty NSAID, but from past experience those are no fun). It was _fine_, there was some pain, but that’s par for the course. Opiods seem to be treated as almost essential for dental surgery in the US, and as a rare escalation path elsewhere.
- anotherhue 3y ago
  Same experience. No doubt there will be exceptions but prescribing them as standard seems like negligence.
dyslexit 3y ago
> The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them. How do you measure that? Opioid overdoses accounted for at least 72,800 deaths last year [0] and there are countless more addicts out there whose entire lives are ruined because of that addiction. Many of those people, if they ever recover, will never take opioids again for any real medical pain relief like you did for your wisdom teeth because of the very real risk of relapse. Additionally, opioid withdrawal is, according to almost everyone who's gone through it, is one of the worst experiences you can feel. I'm not taking the side that it definitely doesn't outwheigh the need of those who genuinely need them. On the whole I actually probably agree with that. But stating that so confidently and ignoring the very real pain, lost lives, and broken families caused by opioid addiction because you had your wisdom teeth pulled and wanted opioids feels pretty dismissive and not a serious argument. [0]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7226a4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7226a4.htm
- polski-g 3y ago
  How many millions of people use opioids and do not abuse them, nor get addicted?
  - dyslexit 3y ago
    I don't know, but even if I did you're making a weak argument. You're comparing temporary pain relief for lost and destroyed lives.