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My fear is the same thing that happened with opiods will happen with benzodiazepines. There was a moral panic and the government started cracking down. The go
by tsotha 11y ago
My fear is the same thing that happened with opiods will happen with benzodiazepines. There was a moral panic and the government started cracking down. The government can't do anything with finesse, though, so for awhile people who were in terrible pain had a lot of trouble finding doctors who were willing to risk prescribing them the drugs they needed.
- DanBC 11y agoBut people with long term pain mostly should not have opiods -- they should have rapid access to skilled pain management clinics (and if that clinic recommends opiods then fair enough). Many people in pain end up addicted to opiods, and don't have adaquate pain relief.
- tsotha 11y agoI agree opiods should be a last resort for long term pain. But they should be available if needed. It wasn't just people in long term pain, though. It was people who'd just had operations. It was people in hospice, for Pete's sake. What's the point of worrying about addiction in someone who's gonna be dead in a month?
- MichaelGG 11y agoSurely this is something each individual should decide for themselves. Why should you or anyone else decide that I cannot use morphine and friends?
- x0x0 11y agoBecause society has to clean up the mess, financially and in terms of dealing with addiction via medicine and/or incarceration. Particularly when opiates are bulk resold to addicts.
- DanBC 11y agoIf you want to manage your long term pain morphine and other opiates are probably the wrong choice. The patient will develop a tolerance to the meds; requiring higher and higher doses; and eventually they'll be taking dangerously high levels of those meds and their pain will not be controlled, and so now they have an opiate addiction and they still have the pain.
- MichaelGG 11y agoWhat's dangerously high? All accounts and experiences I've seen show people can adapt to very high doses without extra danger. It'd be lethal to an opiate naive person, but not particularly dangerous to the patient. And with a bit of effort, depending on the underlying problem, this ever-increasing usage isn't a given. That is, is possible to avoid escalating while still reaping much of the benefit.
- DanBC 11y agoBut you're just arguing for careful and managed use of opiates, which is what I'm asking for. We know that opiates are widely misused by clinicians and we know that this misuse does not help treat the pain and causes considerable other problems.