Thank you Dr Matt Bivons for writing this and Matt Taibbi for publishing it.
As someone who’s been in recovery for many years now and who once had a $400 a day opioid (dilaudid) habit, I can tell you firsthand that our country has never seen an epidemic this massive or destructive. If there was another country shelling the United States and killing 100,000+ citizens a year I can assure you there would be an all out scorched earth campaign against them by the US military and the public would be arm in arm in full support. But addiction is messy, shameful and still stigmatized and as a result, doesn't get the funding and priority from Washington. Since the prescription crackdown that started some years ago, the Chinese and the Mexican cartels have ramped up importing tons of poisonous fentanyl and now xylazine into our country doing irreparable damage to our communities and loved ones. Clearly we have a huge demand side in the US and I'm not downplaying that, but we desperately need to ramp up our interdiction efforts.
The Sackler family, the board of directors at Pfizer and any other executives who've been complicit in fueling and profiting from this epidemic should all be on death row right now awaiting lethal injection. These psychopaths and the companies they run are worse than war criminals….they are the modern day mass murderers and should be treated as such. If we sent these people to prison or life or to be put to death, I can promise you things in the board room, marketing departments and sales conferences would get different quick.
The families that have lost loved ones to these drugs are simply ignored by our politicians because they receive so much money from the big pharma lobbyist and its easy to stigmatize the person who's become addicted. It’s truly criminal.
Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag and Leighton Woodhouse have some great articles concerning how we address the demand and treatment/recovery side of this and are all worth reading over on the Public substack .
Its clear to me that addiction must be addressed from all sides but unfortunately as a society we are falling short. Lets hope something changes so that we can turn the tide of this tragedy that continues to grow and break our hearts.
And then there are people like me, who live in serious chronic pain due to accidents that have lifelong effects, who can’t get adequate pain relief because someone somewhere might get addicted.
I took 200mg of morphine daily for years before neuroscience came along with a device that literally gave me my life back.
I told my anesthesiologist I wanted off the morphine and had a couple of months of step down, the last two weeks of which were not pleasant, and that was that.
If the device fails for some mechanical reason and it’s a weekend I am shit out of luck.
I feel for those who get addicted but I’m also outraged that people like me are assumed drug seekers.
This is a really important perspective. The opioid addiction problem started because we have a really nasty chronic pain problem. Before we start panicking about a few people getting high from these drugs we need a plan for the people who need them to live.
"The de facto legalization of heroin in some states'?
Are you referring to decriminalization? That's always been a horrible idea, a half-assed measure that has led thousands of addicts to migrate to and use publicly in those places that have adopted this stupid policy. It does nothing to police the black market sale of Fentanyl or other drugs purported to be "heroin."
What the half-measure of decriminalization + de facto impunity for retailers creates is the worst of all possible policy solutions: the monopoly over the supply is retained by criminals who benefit from the price support of illegality, with little threat that their activities will be penalized by law enforcement.
I think we can do better than simply legalizing all opioids for legal sale. But that would be an improvement over both user decrim supplied by the criminal monopoly AND a return to the sad old ineffective status quo of Drug War Prohibition. With full legalization, at least there would be a selection of opioids available that are less lethal than the ultrapowerful fentanyls.
Restricting access to pain killers for people in pain to prevent recreational users from getting their kicks is wrong. People in pain shouldn't have to be Heroisch.
Yes. A huge downside of the craze to reduce opioid prescriptions is that people who genuinely have to have them end up being denied. And just suffer. There is a move to assert other remedies (from NSAIDS to yoga) are just as good and sometimes they are, but too often not. Some people must have opioid and the addiction tradeoff is justified, far better than being in pain.
Taking prescription meds from pain patients doesn't decrease Addicts! Addiction isn't a trade off. Chronic pain patients are not Addicts. Recognize An Addict takes anything & wants more, more to get high. Recognize an Addict isn't taking med for pain . They take it to get high & their supply is Street drugs, Street Fentanyl is #1... it's cheap. But these are not chemist mixing street drugs. The street drugs may be strong, so strong it would kill an elephant. or a batch may be weak. weak. Sadly a person with addictive trait will display addictive behavior...they want to get high & constantly seek a better high
Drug Addiction like Alcoholism are disease entities.
Taking away pain meds meds, prescribed & taken as ordered is cruel. They don't seek a high...and a months supply last one month. An Addict would take a months supply in a day or two .
It would be great if we knew who has the addictive trait before they feel their first high.
Thanks to state and federal law and regulations I have little to no hope of getting help from a medical professional except my neurosurgeon or anesthesiologist if something goes wrong with the device.
For those with privacy concerns, that was thrown out the window by Trump’s administration.
Every opioid prescription goes from the physician to a state agency, at which the patient’s medical history is stored, where the prescription is approved or denied before being forwarded to the pharmacy. Some faceless bureaucrat has the final say regarding whether or not that prescription is filled. There is no appeal or even method to contact those bureaucrats or their bosses.
People trumpeting the privacy invasion of the censorship regime as if it’s something new amuse me. Where were you in 2017/2018?
You're suffering from a regime of overcompensation. And also some cognitive dissonance, as a side effect.
If there had been accountability across state lines for opioid prescriptions in the late 1990s, the Oxy problem would have been nipped in the bud, because the vast majority of it was the result of unethical script docs writing prescriptions for mass quantities to dealers who diverted it to the street market. The DEA couldn't track their own Schedule II Federally controlled substances- because regulation was left to the separate states, and some of them, like Florida and Tennessee, had practically no accountability enforcement.
Along about 2014, the Feds finally began to put a regime of accountability for opioid prescriptions in place. And, as bureaucracies so often do in the aftermath of negligence, the DEA has started off by overdoing it- cracking down on prescriptions of opioids, even to people with legitimate chronic pain needs.
That said, folks should know that opioids of one sort or another are still among the most heavily prescribed classes of drugs. Opioids aren't going anywhere; for most pain conditions, they're still the most effective painkillers out there.
Also, to be fair to Donald Trump (not Presidential material, imo) the latest Federal crackdown on opioid prescriptions actually began in the Obama era.
The current regime of "drug control" is folly stacked on top of folly. There's no need for bupenorphine prescriptions to cost hundreds of dollars a month, for instance. That's just more profiteering. The only reason why fentanyl dominates the street market is because street addicts have no other recourse. It isn't like there's some selection of milder products available in the illicit marketplace. Most street retail markets, it's fentanyl or nothing. In the 1960s, at least it was possible to purchase mild opioid cough medicines from drug stores.
The Federal government's own survey statistics indicate that about 80% of people who experiment with opioids for recreational purposes are able to walk away from them without being addicted.
I think illegality does currently put a damper on repeating experiments of that sort too frequently; I don't support full-scale legalization of all opioids. But it has to be admitted that even most recreational users are able to keep from getting addicted. It also has to be said that the massive marketplace in illicit drugs does not do ID checks, and the population most vulnerable to addiction are users who had their first exposure as teenagers.
This is exactly what brought me here to comment. I hear more and more stories of people who can't get painkillers that work when they have very painful ailments. "You may die screaming, but you'll be pure" seems like it might not be a consolation to everyone.
I'm 10 years in due to injury, Marie. I'd like to be more specific, but hell, me using my real name and all makes for public preclusion. Know for certain though, my empathy is genuine, 24/7/365. If you are getting good (sufficient) results from a TENS, that's wonderful. If it is something more sophisticated I haven't heard of, I'd sure like to be apprised if you have the inclination. Sincere best wishes to you.
TENS did nothing for me at all. The device is an implanted spinal cord stimulator and it’s been an absolute Godsend for me. It’s specific to neuropathy so it’s not for everyone but for me, it literally gave me my life back. I’m working full time, got my leg strength and balance back, and live a relatively normal life.
In the space of 14 months I went from housebound to employed, etc.
It has its downsides, life is always a trade off, but I’m glad I took the plunge.
My adult daughter has a progressive degenerative neurological disorder. She had a spinal cord stimulator, which helped her dramatically for several years. These days, she's in debilitating pain all the time. And, when she goes to refill her medications from her Palliative doc, the restrictions are odious, and she feels like "a drug seeker," although a quick glance at her medical history would belie that. I understand the INTENT of these strict guardrails for prescribers & pharmacists. But it regularly places the pain patient in a very humiliating position. I don't know the answer. But pain is pain. And we as a society need to figure it out.
I’m so sorry to hear it stopped working for your daughter. Pain like that is unimaginable to almost everyone.
I hear you about the degradation we face. Heaven forbid a voluntary addict’s behavior be criticized as it might cause “harm” while your daughter’s real and involuntary suffering is ignored.
That's really great to hear, thank you for responding. I'm still holding out hope even at this late stage of the game (for me.) It's good to know there might be options yet, I decided against fusion several years ago myself. Like you said, "It's a trade-off," and I most certainly agree. Glad to know you are doing well. Peace be yours!
I take 20 mg per day of hydrocodone, plus Lyrica and indomethacin for my pain. It is harder and harder to get my meds. And it's not like I want lots of drugs. I used to take 40 mg per day but I worked with my doctors to take less. One benefit is that I am not constipated any more.
See? That's just ignorant. They make my sister jump through hoops to get meds, & if there's a glitch & she runs out, oh well. The people making these stupid laws & regulations have no empathy whatsoever.
That’s the inevitable consequence of bureaucratic involvement I think.
My best to your sister. Neuropathic pain is beyond bad. I thought 48 hours of labor without so much as a Tylenol was as bad as it could be until my accident. How little I knew.
Reporting is so mixed up. They report as if every person given opiates/opioids will be an Addict.
Every one who takes a drink does not become an Alcoholic.
An addict seeks drugs, runs out, wants more..Always MORE, more, more.Anythingbto get high. They don't pick up a prescription. at the pharmacy
They report as if Fentanyl is a killer. Fentanyl is an old drug. It was used in OR in the 70s. Very safe in the prescribed dose.
The crisis of death , the killer opioids, are illicit, street drugs. Street Fentanyl is easy to mix but when nixed in street labs no one knows how potent a batch may be until people start dying from one pill.
Sadly an addict resorts to street drugs to stay high...street Fentanyl is cheap ,& deadly.
A chronic pain patient who receives a prescription for 30 days.. and takes meds as ordered. The prescription lasts 30 days. They are not drug addicts seeking a high....they take pain meds to have a better quality of life.
FYI if a person has the addictive trait you will know quickly...they will take anything to get high.. Alcohol, street drugs, crack ... or street Fentanyl. They don't get meds at local pharmacy! A prescription for 30 would last a day & the addict seeks more, more, more...
My sister is in chronic pain from ankylosing spondylitis, among other things, & she has a heck of a time getting pain relief. They've made it very difficult for people who actually need pain meds to get them. She's in a pain management program, & every once in a while, there's some sort of glitch with communications between the doctor's office and the pharmacy, & she's in a world of hurt while out of meds. She recently switched from Vicodin to Dilaudid.
Fair argument, but not that binary. These drugs aren't like having a drink or smoking a little weed. These kids try them and after as little as 5 days of use, they are physically addicted to them.....and they are incredibly deadly.
I have a nephew now in his 40s, he got addicted to Oxy when in middle school. My sister has lived in a guilt-ravaged world ever since. All these years of waiting for. . . . the Call. Many, many rehab attempts futile. The kids get the worst of it, their brains are sponges for Oxy addiction, they get hooked early and seemingly irrevocably. A life sentence. So fucking sad, so helpless for family.
Tolerance to opiates is built rapidly and that’s how people end up with $400/day habit just to face the day. I worked in detox and suboxone really helped but if it’s stopped, the cravings for the drug are so bad it sends detoxed people directly back to the drug when they’re released. It’s a terrible problem.
It's not so much "craving for the drug" as wanting relief from the horrible anxiety and insomnia/restlessness that comes along with withdrawal.
The depression that frequently attends detoxification leads to more use, unfortunately. One's ability to cope with this and the intensity of the desire to quit (or lack of it) determines whether one starts using again. Also, if the conditions that make using appealing are not removed (boredom, grinding poverty, existential hopelessness, no future prospects, etc.) "relapse" is likely.
The nuance to your statement is that there are circumstances within people's lives that lead to the desire to use drugs likes heroin and fentynal. They are not all rock stars who can afford the heavy usage and recovery. Some are tricked (peer pressured or enticed), coerced, come from broken families, have mental health issues similarly caused by myriad circumstances.
It's a very difficult problem to solve, if not unsolvable. I cringe in saying it's one way to chip away at the overpopulation issue. However, there are far more humane ways to mitigate that and I feel for those who lost loved ones to drug overdose/addiction. It's a terrible plague against humanity.
Two words: "Rat Park". Nobody seems to ask *why* do Americans have such an insatiable appetite for drugs?
For that matter, I understand that meth is making a comeback, and I don't think too many methheads got their start with doctor-prescribed methamphetamine. Maybe I am wrong.
I also understand that The New Hotness in opioids is "tranq" (aka Fentanyl and Xylazine), and I don't think Xylazine is approved for human use. (There's also benzo dope, which is Fentanyl mixed with benzodiazepines, and benzos can be obtained via prescription but I don't think many people got hooked on legal benzos and then decided to mix in fent).
"I don't think many people got hooked on legal benzos and then decided to mix in fent" I can tell you that's very much the case with many many addicts. Dope hopping is totally part of the addiction pathway, just like when we started drinking beer, some of us went to whiskey, or when we started using a little coke, moved to crack cocaine or meth. It's very normal for those with addiction problems to have a progression path like that.
The bigger question of "why" we have such an appetite is a topic that is vast and way outside my punt coverage. Have a great day man.
Why ? I think because we are trying to escape a very ill, toxic society with skewed values and false gods....when you have to use all of your energy to protect yourself and your children from the idiocy around you and them, it becomes an exhausting effort. One can create a loving "bubble" in ones' home, but eventually you have to send your offspring out into the madness beyond the door.....many lack the armour and coping skills to deal with what they must encounter....three quarters of a century have taught me that one clear thing......and it is not always possible to instill all the necessary things to survive....the unknowns they now face have become deadly, deadly.... as their need to experiment is the only way to truly learn a thing until they become experienced enough to recognize inherent dangers and pitfalls....our "Society " is 'culling the herd before our children are even fully born into Life. ( Excuse my diatribe)
And your point about the "ill, toxic society" is bigger than our ill, toxic society can admit: "it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society."
Why do Americans have such an appetite for drugs? Actually, humans have a propensity for addiction--we've seen it with TV, mass media, engineered super-palatable foods, sugar, alcohol...
What's sort of unique ("exceptional" according to J. Stalin) about America is the profit machine is so finely tuned, and the sociopaths (as the author called them) at the ready to shunt the money their way.
A criminalized subculture of tens of millions of children laid the groundwork for the pariah subculture between the 1960s and the 1980s. But even after 25 years of underground economy and subterfuge, our opioid addiction problems were relatively minor, up until the Oxycontin era. Not negligible, but relatively minor. About on par with what they were in the late 19th century.
Oxy really did change the game in the mid-1990s. By the early 2000s, more 15 year olds were having their first (non-alcohol, non-tobacco) "drug experience" with prescription opioid pills than were trying pot. Setting aside the overdose death and addiction part and considered on a "bang for your buck" basis, hard drugs have been cheaper to get high on than pot for around the past 40 years. When Oxy first came in, a pill was cheaper than a joint of sinsemilla or a pint of whiskey. $10 for a 40mg Oxy, that was stronger than a bag of street heroin, and it lasted longer.
I keep up; I read the annual University of Michigan Monitoring The Future, SAMHSA and ONDCP surveys (none of those sites make it easy to navigate to the pages where the surveys are. I find that baffling. But all of those reports can be found online.)
One piece of good news that has been practically absent from the headlines is that most teenagers have gotten the message about how dangerous opioids are- particularly the fentanyl-tainted counterfeit pills. Teenage experimentation has dropped off drastically; it's less than 1/3 of what it was ten years ago. A fact that almost never gets mentioned by the news media. My local news reports on every high school overdose incident, but I've never once heard any news report mention that the teenage opioid user population is much, much lower than it was in the late 1990s-2015.
I'm not progressive in the slightest and I do believe there are too many people. However, before you blast me for being misanthropic, my perspective is influenced by maximizing available resources, quality of life, and real human progress - for all.
I would prefer people make better choices on their own than to dictate those choices to them. Alas, a progressive would say, "that's the problem right there."
Can we give the "stuffing words in the mouths of the partisan opposition" thing a rest, already? Inventing cheap shots is just bogus. Whichever partisan side does it.
Well, maybe not too many people, per se, but too many of the wrong kind. I'm kinda okay with idiots killing themselves and dismantling big pharma at the same time
Well, I'm not CIA. And dismantling big pharma is a much bigger priority. I don't want people to die, but the ones who can't learn a pretty simple lesson aren't worth spending much on
My son died at 25 in 2017 from an accidental Fentanyl overdose. He was many things but he definitely was not an idiot. This isn't just happening to drug users and people on the street, we've lost way too many young, smart, promising "kids next door" from this epidemic.
Okay, but I bet that fentanyl didn't come from a pharmacy. And while there was much we didn't know in 2017, we do now. Taking anything not from a pharmacy is easy enough to understand now
Unless you've lived it, you have no idea. It never ends but I have 2 daughters and a wife who all need the best version of me I can bring, so bring it I do. People always say, "Life goes on." Now I know what they mean by that statement. It will never be as full, as kind or as hopeful a life but it definitely goes on and you have two choices. I choose to live it the best I can.
Sorry you were one of the victims of pharma. Were you started on pain meds for something minor or major? I ask because I find it interesting how many minor injuries were the start of opiate addiction. I had some minor orthopedic sports related surgeries and was always offered, sometimes even pressed, to take opiates. Totally understand if you don’t want to share on a public forum btw
Thanks. It was a long and ugly road to recovery, but today my life is really good. I was prescribed them after a surgery. This was early on the the oxy days and I was terribly over prescribed by the doctor. I don't really believe it was his fault as he was listening to what the pharma reps were telling him and what the FDA was saying early on. I became physically and mentally addicted in less than 2 weeks of using them. I eventually went to buying them on street which led to a 6 year, nose down, full throttle, into the side of the mountain tail spin that almost killed me. Again, recovery is possible but not easy. My substack posts are based only on recovery as I have a passion to share that there is hope and a great life in recovery from chronic addiction. Have a great day.
Evan’s, speaking as someone who has enjoyed and/or benefited from your contributions here, may I say how glad I am you are still among us. What a harrowing battle you’ve had.
I read the book "Dope Sick." The main take-away is that for many years there were only a few people raising hell about this - or trying to draw attention to what was really happening.
One analogy might be the stock analyst who always knew Bernie Madoff was a fraud and running a Ponzi scheme. He did everything he could think of to expose him and stop him ... and was ignored over and over.
I feel like that guy with some of my Covid stories!
Thanks for sharing. Sadly I think doctors still readily advise opiates after most surgeries. That has been my experience with 3 ortho surgeries. I don’t think the risk / reward is solid for opiates after surgery. Reward: less pain for a couple weeks. Risk: addiction and corresponding life devistated , possibly death
Give me the opioids. Ive taken Percocet (5mg oxycodone) for a few weeks at a time twice due to injuries. Didn't overdo it, one or two a day. No addictive effects, tapered naturally as pain diminished.
There is addiction risk and it's a tradeoff. Med literature that I have read mentions that there are times where the addiction is a better choice than otherwise unmanageable pain. Should be between you and your doctor.
Indeed, "There are times where the addiction is a better choice than otherwise unmanageable pain. Should be between you and your doctor."
100%. Unfortunately, this fact is usually overlooked in most discussions of the "crisis."
We have a crisis of purpose and meaning, a chaotic society, and ineffectual, craven, corrupt "leaders." Opiate addiction is a symptom of this. The rate of addiction is directly proportional to the general level of despair.
All that. You and I share the same outlook on our era.
People who appoint themselves to "solve" any crisis end up stomping on other people in their zeal to craft a solution and be seen as doing such. No matter what you do to solve a problem it is guaranteed that unintended negative consequences will occur.
And on that topic, you don't often notice people that suggest doing nothing can be, though not ideal, better than any alternative.
Overregulating opioids has been utterly unfair to people who have a legitimate need for them, and pretending that other alternatives are just as good when they're not so you can reduce prescription numbers and thus claim "success" at the expense of inflicting pain on other people is a crime.
Good you know your limits. Personally I never had a problem. In fact I got tired of them long before 2 weeks was out and had no problem quitting.
I was burned between 5 to 10 percent of my body. Second and third degree. Even with opiates I was in pain. That is when I discovered Oxy was shite. It is like crack, you go up and crash. I had to ask for codeine, just to have the 6-8 hour relief that allowed me to sleep. The first week was hellish.
Without opiates however, I would have gone into shock from the pain. I don't believe we should keep surgical/cancer/burn patients from opiods just because someone somewhere can get addicted. Maybe we should go back to milder opiates with a longer half-life in the bloodstream.
"I became physically and mentally addicted in less than 2 weeks of using them."
Not to diminish your account of suffering, but while you may have WANTED more oxycodone once your pain was resolved ("mentally addicted" as you put it), you would have discovered that there are no withdrawal symptoms with only 2 weeks daily use.
Not everyone enjoys the opiate effect. These folks are able to stop using once their prescriptions expire.
Yes....exactly. My son was a D1 Collegiate soccer player and member of our National Team. He suffered an ACL injury in college, had surgery and became addicted to Oxycontin. He graduated and started working so had money to secure drugs once his pain medication from MD's grift ran it's course. He bought what he thought was Oxy on the street but it turned out to be fentanyl. I'm aware of at least two other HS classmates of his who have also died from fentanyl poisoning. We live in a very affluent community. Our government clearly doesn't care about this. The perps (Sackler family) are buying their way out of prison by paying fines representing a fraction of their wealth.
Thanks for sharing this Evan. I’ve got a similar situation but different experience with opioids. In 2017 I suffered a traumatic back injury, fracturing three vertebra, one of which was categorized as the worst of the burst compressions while the other two were merely bad burst compressions. I was briefly paralyzed below the waist but movement came back within and hour and full movement, sensation the next day. It occured overseas and required a med jet for extraction back to the States. I’ve seen multiple neuro’s for chronic pain, although I could be standing next to you and you wouldn’t know I was a 5 or 7 of 10- it becomes a new normal so you just carry on. I’ve been on opioids, Gabapentin, multiple muscle relaxants, prescription NSAIDs and use non THC (and sometime THC) CBD gummies. Just saw the same surgeon that did the fusion surgery for Tiger Woods last week for another opinion and still a no for any type of surgery. So more PT and my mini pharma of drugs for like
Back in 2017, all the fuss about opioids hadn’t peaked and I left the receiving ER with scripts for Oxy, Hydro, Tylenol III and Tramadol. I could refill any whenever I needed, up the dosage amounts, drop them, etc with no major pushback. But I’ll add that I am also a recovering alcoholic (23 years on June 4th) and sensitive to addiction issues. After settling in to a routine for pain management and just dealing with one primary doctor for my back, we dropped all the opioids but Hydrocodone 10/325 3x daily. Sometimes 4x, sometimes 5x but at the time, the Fed hadn’t tightened the screws on doctors prescribing. But that was short lived and now, I’m pretty much stuck at 3x 10/325 as my doc is very reluctant to go up in the 90 per month. Which really kind of sucks as I’ve definitely built up a tolerance and while some days are only a 2x day, I have more 4x and 5x days than 2x or 3x ones as I still work full time (outside tech sales). And trying to change out to Oxy (which I really don’t like) or try time release fentanyl patches is just not going to happen. So I’m stuck and hence have upped the NSAID use and supplement with legal and quasi legal (and totally unregulated) CBD gummies.
Where we differ and maybe it’s dosage, but I do not find Hydrocodone addictive. I am at the point where I get to experience withdrawal every month now, usually for just about a week but I start tapering off when I’m down to 6-8 pills and then reserve 2 for the last days before being out. At worst is an hour or so of stomach cramps and maybe one night of restless sleeping but I get no seeking type behavior that would have me trying to find them on the street. I had months of angst after I quit drinking, with little triggers and stuff that I’d fight through. I went through rehab and a little AA. I don’t really get anything like that with the opioids and as I mentioned, I get to quit every month for a week or so before I refill. If my doc said, “that’s it, your done” I’d be very disappointed but I wouldn’t start shooting up. I’d just no that life was going to be several degrees more painful than it had been.
In rehab I learned a lot about addiction and some of it is more habit than addiction, ie more behavioral. Not saying that is 100% with opioid users/abusers but it plays an important role. And some folks are just unwilling to change parts of their behavior they can control. Like a homeless person given the choice of a warm shelter on a cold winter night v sleeping on the street and they opt for the cold. You just can’t fix them. But for users in scenarios following a surgery or some event where short term prescribed opioids make sense for pain relief, behavioral therapy shoud be able to mitigate any addiction issues with tapering off of the medicines involved. The street abusers are gonna do what they do. Basically, there needs to be a middle ground for folks like you and I caught up in the middle of all of this. As much as I would love to drop my meds for a month or two, just to see how I could manage, I am literally afraid to do so, since there is no guarantee I could get the prescription started up again.
Understand and thank you for sharing. I just had to get to the point where I was totally off of them. I couldn't control my intake over any prolonged period of time....it would always get out of control. I just have an addictive disposition about me that I've had since I was a child. We all get to deal with these hurdles in life in the best manor that fits our situations thank goodness. Have a great night.
Nothing’s going to change as long as the C_IA is using the money for black ops just like they have been since the 50’s. In fact they’re still transporting drugs in from South America Asia Thailand and others in military jets so I’m sorry to say nothing will change as long as government benefits from the sales. For anyone interested it’s called Operation Gladio and bush sr setup the contacts and transportation while he was in the agency up until he became VP for Reagan.
Right. Those Pfizer creeps hold down innocent victims and force-feed them opiates.
I have no love for "big pharma" and its obviously unethical marketing of useless or dangerous Coof vaccines, but opiate manufacturers and doctors who prescribe them are not responsible for the large number of users, addicts and overdoses. Likewise, those who overdose on prescribed opiates are responsible for their own deaths. Those who become victims of black market dealers and their unmeasured, impure drugs are not. Relying on illegal supplies is the direct result of prohibition.
Imagine if you could have got your Dilaudid legally. You would not have paid that much to maintain your addiction and it would have been nowhere near as "messy, shameful or stigmatized."
Too true Evans W....follow the money......"Filthy Lucre" as my Mother would say....Good luck with your continued sobriety young man, you are brave....my son didn't make it out alive.
There's a 'ladder' of organization and control in all of the huge industries with corporate media and Big Pharma locked together financially where one can't survive without the other. Follow the ladder up from there and you come to the big banks, Wall Street, and government. Follow the ladder up a couple more steps and you come to the people who own the Central Banks of Europe and the Federal Reserve. They're all in on it. That's why there's no scorched Earth policy to end it, solve it, or fix it. The CIA is the world's largest drug trafficker. Those labs in Mexico, the traffickers who move the precursors to Mexico, the mules who move it across the border into the US, and the media and pharma executives all do what they do and get away with it because they're all clandestinely controlled and manipulated by the dark forces running our government's policies on behalf of the owners of the Central Banks. It sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but Satan literally uses Earth as his playground and his most successful lie is convincing you that he doesn't exist
"As someone who’s been in recovery for many years now and who once had a $400 a day opioid (dilaudid) habit, I can tell you firsthand that our country has never seen an epidemic this massive or destructive."
- Lol. Really? You should have "Just Said No" or gotten mandatory minimum sentencing at the very least.
"Its clear to me that addiction must be addressed from all sides but unfortunately as a society we are falling short. "
- No. Mandatory minimum sentencing.
To bad treatment/recovery was included in Obamacare. Guess some states missed out. :)
Congratulations to you for finding a way out of the addiction abyss. Someone very close to me has, is, and always will be battling an opioid addiction. From what I can tell, recovery entails a complete and very intentional rewiring of the brain. Kicking the habit is indescribably difficult, and as you wrote, compounded by inadequate professional support and above all shame. In addition to knowing someone with an opioid addiction, I live in a land where it is enabled and abetted. Every single day of my life I have to diligently avoid running an addict over. They wander through busy streets right around the corner from my house. Many have been hit and killed in my town. Many. No exaggeration. How is this happening? If you read this comment, will you please share a link or two to the articles you referenced?
What gets me is a journalist can write a best-selling book ("Dope Sick") about oxycontin and the villainous Purdue Pharmacy owners - a book that's made into a popular TV series - and everyone agrees Big Pharma is very bad and we celebrate the few people who tried to expose this travesty.
But no journalist at a corporate-owned newspaper can write a book about Covid vaccines that have killed far more than 80,000 citizens and have "injured" millions. I mean, it's the same companies committing crimes against humanity.
Basically, we can trust these companies about Covid vaccines (or remdesivir, aka "Run, Death is Near!"), but we all agree these pharmaceutical companies are/were evil when they were peddling dangerous pain killers and making a killing off of those mass deaths.
Also, it was okay to belatedly expose Theranos and its snake-oil-selling CEO for marketing a bogus blood testing device for more than a decade, but journalists at the Wall Street Journal can't make a few phone calls about remedesivir killing thousands? (I don't think the Theranos "Bad Blood" device killed anyone).
Some scandals are okay to expose, but the really big ones are off limits.
A Pfizer bigwig was called to testify before the EU parliament. She was asked if the Covid vaccine had been tested before the rollout to see if it prevented transmission. It had not. This seems like a pretty simple question every journalist should have asked. Instead news anchors, comedians, Howard Stern and other deranged celebs lambasted the unvaccinated for a couple of years. Meanwhile, a study out of the Cleveland Clinic found vaccinated people actually more likely to test positive for Covid than the unvaccinated. Never mind!
You nailed it. In addition the same mainstream media mocks people that don’t take the vaccine, or try generic drugs as treatment…when it seems logical those are probably the same people victimized by pharma
Big Pharma went all-in on vaccines because they got liability immunity for vaccines in 1986.
And then they got permission to start running TV commercials and so now 50 percent of the advertising revenue for many TV networks probably comes from Big Pharma. (So there went the scathing "Sixty Minutes" expose on Big Pharma's crimes).
Local TV stations probably get 25 percent of their revenue from Plaintiff Trial Lawyers, who get rich suing trucking companies that are involved in fatal crashes. But those "fearless" trial lawyers who stick up for the little guy won't (or can't) sue ... Big Pharma. They are all in the same club.
The corruption of medical journals that only publish the trials their controllers at Big Pharma want them to publish - and not the trials that revealed toxic side-effects of their latest moneyspinner - is (or should be) a major issue. As in politics, those who should be journalists and "gamekeepers" are too often poachers these days.
Very interesting, but missing one salient perspective: from those who are in extreme pain.
My husband has extreme back pain. Tylenol 3&5 offered relief when he needed it. Their intestinal side effects prevented constant use, so he only used them when engaged in activities that agitated his condition or once the pain has begun.
But with all the "opioid hysteria" he can no longer receive any relief from it. Doctors are afraid to prescribe any opioid.
So the pain continues.
Life essentially stops until the pain subsides.
I discovered in my attempts to help, that keeping him on a high protein diet throughout the day can prevent him from going into spasm. High levels of omega 3&6 help, as does cannabis cbds.
But with no access to remediation, once the pain begins, there is no relief except time.
My husband scoffs at the idea of addiction, "being pain free is not an addiction. It's like saying breathing is an addiction..."
As always, nothing is clear cut, but the trend is to ignore the need that exists for pain remediation. The abuse that exists will always exist because those individuals have at their root, different issues. They may be in some pain, and Doctors take an easy one fits all approach that does not fit them, and then blame the medication instead of themselves.
We have also eliminated sugar and carbs from our diet. While it is helpful, it has nothing to offer once pain sets in.
My point is, not everyone-- or even the majority, of folks who are prescribed pain killers abuse them. The vast majority use them as needed. To declare these drugs as "addictive" and therefore "bad" is absurd and cruel to this who do need them but can no longer obtain them.
That is a prescription for street fentanyl.
They aren't saving any lives by keeping opioids out of medicine. They are merely making more money by producing cheap synthetic fentanyl and killing more people than ever before.
As a practical reality, opioids aren't going anywhere. I'm hopeful that a wider open discussion will eventually lead to a sane, reasonable balance between medicine and law. The problem of opioid addiction is no more to be legislated out of existence than alcoholism is.
Please don’t ignore the inverse relationship between opioid prescriptions vs. drug OD deaths. Americans in severe pain are being deprived of relief. DEA & CDC are the fentanyl cartels’ most effective marketers.
How are people in severe pain being denied relief? Getting opiate prescriptions is easy as can be. I don’t take opiates, don’t want to take opiates, yet get offered and even this crap pushed on me for minor sports related injuries. Dentist will give it to you “in case there is pain” after a filling.
Are you sure about that Big John? Because the DEA have doctors and pharmacies locked down so tight it’s impossible unless you are a patient of a pain management doctor or have severely injured yourself and go to an ER or God forbid have cancer. GP’s can’t prescribe the hard stuff the only thing they can prescribe is tramadol. Yes I have firsthand experience because I’ve got multiple bad discs just had both knees replaced and next will probably be a hip. Car accidents and workplace injuries, my bad though who knew it was a bad idea to carry 50# bales of wire on your shoulders.😁 Driving a big truck for a few decades hasn’t help either the roads are so bad now. That’s been my experience anyway.
Have you asked for an option prescription lately???
My niece has stage 4 cancer and is extreme pain. She has to physically get up and go to her doctor every single month to get a new prescription because they can't write one with refills. She's so ill that that is impossible some months and then she goes through withdrawals in addition to the pain.
Even in Colorado, which passed legislation to protect drs effectively controlling severe pain, DEA intimidation causing 75 yr old veteran in terrible disabling pain to be undertreated—what idiot at CDC decided you could stop teenagers from becoming addicts by depriving oldsters pain meds?
At my Substack, I wrote a book review of "The Real Anthony Fauci" where I called this book perhaps "the most-important non-fiction book of my lifetime." I stand by that statement, not because RFK, Jr. eviscerates Anthony Fauci or chronicles all the Covid response lies, but because he does such a persuasive job showing how the entire U.S. Science and Medicine Establishment has been completely captured ... by Big Pharma.
He also provides important historical context on how this happened. It all dates back to the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation and the beginning of the "pill for every ill" movement. He also reminds us that President Eisenhower warned about the capture of science and medicine by the government in his famous farewell address, warning about the Military Industrial Complex.
In his follow-up, he develops the theme that the Military Industrial Complex effectively merged with the Science/Medicine/Big Pharma/Intelligence Community Complex.
It's the worst of all nightmare scenarios. Basically, "public health" has never been worse in America in my lifetime. And it's only going to get worse.
Other excellent books have told some of the same story, but it was Kennedy who wrote the book that made this a "mainstream" topic.
P.S. Despite 24-7, 365-day Propoganda Campaigns going on four years ... "Vaccine hesitancy" has never been higher ... The numbers are still too small, but more people ARE starting to question Big Pharma. There's probably a reason all those Big Pharma investors have the best bug-out shelters in New Zealand.
I lost my 22 year old niece to opioids 5 years ago. So much Hell preceded that. Her admissions to her parents that she traded sex for opioids. The fact that her sisters had to install deadbolts on their bedroom doors because she would steal their money. The day her & her boyfriend broke into her parent's home & stole everything that wasn't bolted down. Pointless trip after pointless trip through rehab until the last one. That was the one that seemed to take. Her parents even let her live back at home. Then one morning her dad went to wake her. She had her 1st job interview in...well, probably ever. She was lying dead on her bedroom floor.
She was committing suicide in slow motion ever since her teens. Whatever her pain was it didn't disappear with her death. She just passed it on to her family. Her dad is buried in videogames & sports, her mother needs psychotropics to cope and one of her younger sisters is perilously close to suicide from a combination of her sister's death, crushing student debt, failed love affairs, etc.
In my opinion the respectable sociopaths who unleashed this shit on the world should currently be in Rikers getting their teeth punched out for all of those future blow jobs they're going to be giving.
Fuck 'em all with a rusty nail studded 2x4 straight to Hell.
For clarity's sake I should point out that my niece's first forays into drug use weren't through weed or even opioids. Early in high school she started buying drugs like Prozac because, according to her, they were everywhere. Most of her friends had anti-depressant scrips.
Which makes me wonder who in their right mind thought that giving those powerful drugs of dubious efficacy to a bunch of high schoolers was a good idea? Did they have emotional mood swings of great intensity? Last I looked that was called puberty & I doubt that one can drug their way out of it.
It is definitely possible that antidepressants are overprescribed, but believe me, if your kid needs them, and they work, it makes such a huge difference in their quality of life.
I lost my nephew to a heroin overdose more than 20 years ago, & we just buried his son about a month ago. He also died of an overdose, leaving an 8 year old son who will now grow up without a dad. He'd been in & out of rehab & we all thought he was doing great. He was working, going to church, going to all his son's sports events. That's how he was found: he didn't show up to a game, & the boy's mom knew something was wrong. His son was everything to him. They found him slumped over a table. So many lives ripped apart over these dumb drugs. It's just so sad.
It's not the drugs, per se: it's desperation. These people are in psychic or physical pain. They see no path forward to achieve what our culture had defined as success. I know it makes no sense to many. But then again, how many of you take an antidepressant? Antianxiety? A stiff drink? A glass of wine or three? Come on: the culture is telling us if you're not a master of the universe, you're a useless POS. (OK. I'm coloring outside the lines, as usual. Also. I worked in an emergency room & healthcare for many years.) There's no one answer. Dammit. I hate that part.
"Opioid overdoses accelerated amidst the despair of COVID-19 lockdowns."
This really should be talked about more. The data is irrefutable:
- Year over year, 911 calls for opioid-related overdoses increased 250% between 2019 and 2020. Some hospital emergency departments saw an increase in overdose cases as high as 1,000%.
- In March 2020, overdose deaths rose 18%; in April, 29%; in May, 42%. These were the most draconian months of the pandemic.
- By July of 2020 a total of 35 states had reported substantial increases in opioid-related mortality.
Of course! All those goofy Hollywood celebrities in their mansions with their huge gardens & pools & tennis courts were all over social media telling us to just pull together, & everything would be fine. We'll all sing "Imagine" & we'll get through this.
The truth is, many people live in tiny apartments, with multiple generations. Kids couldn't go to school, adults couldn't go to work, the pervy uncle was eyeing the children. . . When these folks were confined to quarters (not even allowed to visit the closest park!), domestic violence calls went up, alcohol & drug abuse went up -- and overdoses & suicides went up.
What the pharma industry wants is more and more new patents, forever. I'd rather use a drug as prescribed that has been around for generations, with a well-established risk/benefit safety profile, than take my chances with the ever more questionable, newly developed, patented and obscenely over-priced products that they call "safe & effective", while they spend billions on deceptive advertising and fraudulent studies, all designed to push their latest crap on an unsuspecting public. Fool me once shame on you, fool us all over and over again, and silence and defame anyone who asks legitimate questions about product safety, well, don't get me started.
While the marketing has been abhorrent, and the financial incentives ignored, there remains a legitimate need for (some of) these drugs. After surgery (twice), I benefitted greatly from a 4-7 day availability of "decreasing" Oxycodone use. I also was very aware of the addictive nature of these drugs (not to mention the side effects), and worked as hard as I could to wean myself off of them as quickly as I could. I think education as to the addictiveness (for consumers and the medical experts) is the best path forward.
Risk vs reward: give this to people so they manage their pain after surgery and risk creating an opiate addict. Or let them get thru it with over the counter pain meds. As a society we are better off with the latter
The creation of Narcan also created a situation where someone can be dragged back from a fatal dose. And police, govts and NGOs bought their own supplies of Narcan to counter the epidemic, but what that signaled was that it was a get out of jail free card for those who OD. This is a tidy little scam by the pharma giants to keep their customers alive and addicted.
You might be aware that over the counter pain medication, in addition to being less effective can damage your organs. It takes surprisingly little Tylenol to cause liver damage. Too much Advil can cause kidney problems. I was terrified of opioids, and I used to grit it out when I was younger taking OTC pain meds. Advil was my go-to, and now I have kidney disease. Who knows if it’s related, but I’ve had enough. I had kidney stones last year, and I took opioids for the pain. Tylenol didn’t come close to working on kidney-stone-level pain.
Much of the damage ascribed to opiates is actually a product of the near-ubiquitous Tylenol base they are combined with. Most people have no idea how dangerous Tylenol is and how common it has become as it is added to almost every OTC cold medicine, allergy med, etc out there.
The second sentence is accurate. I was shocked when I found out how little Tylenol it takes to cause permanent and severe liver damage, and it’s in lots of OTC medicine. The first sentence, though… Fentanyl is causing plenty of damage by itself without any Tylenol. So did OxyContin.
Why are we talking about the Sackers? There have always been greedy business people and there always will be. We have regulatory agencies to protect ourselves from them. The real story is the massive fail of the regulators. Why don't people know who Janet Woodcock is? Why isn't Janet Woodcock and others from the FDA in jail?
Isn’t it interesting that Taibbi wrote about the sociopaths who blew up our economy around 2008 and yet none of the culprits went to prison, and here is another man writing about the Sacklers (and others) who are also not going to prison. It would seem that the lesson is to not rob a convenience store but rather an entire nation, or to not murder an individual with poison, but rather murder thousands if one want to avoid a prison term. And the culprits in each case also made vast sums off money and kept most of it.
Read "Chasing the Scream" or "The Biology of Desire" before evaluating this piece. Yes Pharma is like the Military/Industrial complex, and Big Gov, but just like the military problem, and the government, drugs are a symptom, not the problem. Stop pretending that prohibition on any level works.
It seems to work in places like Singapore. Before you scream unfair let me point out that last year the drug related death in Singapore was 1. One woman put to death for possession. Compare that to the tens of thousands in San Francisco alone and tell me again that prohibition doesn’t work.
I read Chasing the Scream. Not sure how you get anything from that book that makes you think this article is not relevant and has little if not zero connection to whether or not prohibition works or does not work. This article is merely pointing out how ridiculously our medical establishment failed and created addicts. These people did not become addicts because they sought out drugs for a good time and slipped into addiction. They trusted doctors that told them it was not addictive (and those doctors were told this by pharma). This article points how who is to blame, how it happened and has zero to do with prohibition.
I get your point. The argument is about the approach to drug use, for which the current approach has been a complete failure. Yes, the disgustiing grip big pharma has on medicine is a huge factor. 100 yrs of prohibition has yielded ZERO, so yes it is very relevant. As the book notes, most who use do not become addicts, over 90%, that is not irrelevant. The approach of prohibition and incarceration is a provenly failed approach, why double down?
First, I have no faith in government. Second, why is anyone "addicted" to anything? This is not a new problem and certainly is one pertaining to the "government", not some supposed "war" waged for over one hundred years that has been a complete failure. The idea that behavior is controlled by some higher power like "government" is an illusion. Why anyone would have any faith in "government" is a concept beyond defense. When you lose enough you eventually have to tack in a different direction.
Thanks Matt for sharing this very informative article. I've lost a family member (nephew) to an overdose. My daughter is a cop and sees the results of addiction every day on the streets from the homeless to fatal accidents to crime. Driving through town I see people walking like zombies caught up in their addiction. I knew Big Pharma was responsible for a lot of this, but I didn't realize the levels. (However, I think pushing Adderall and Ritalin, etc., on young people should absolutely be discussed in conjunction with the opioid crisis -- I don't think enough people pay attention to that connection. A close family friend was prescribed Ritalin years ago and when he was taken off as a teenager, developed a serious drug and drinking problem. He's clean now and doing great, but it took being arrested and jail time to clean him up.)
My first cousin died from a drug overdose from this stuff. He was the most handsome kid in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, great family, great college fraternity, great athlete, etc. And then he became like a zombie and then over-dosed. I'm sure the vast majority of families can tell similar stories.
Somehow I hope this does become a real political issue. If it does, it should benefit RFK, Jr. immensely. That this hasn't happened already is a "tell" about the powerful forces protecting Big Pharma.
The press coverage of Kennedy’s campaign, which has been slanderous, is very telling. The New York Times keeps talking about some family members who don’t like him—how fascinating!—but never seems to actually discuss or examine any of his positions. Or wonder, gee why has our childhood vaccine schedule tripled since the vaccine companies were given freedom from liability?
“Their under-appreciated rage drove skepticism of official COVID-19 narratives” This is a very important point. Back when people were villainized for not taking the vaccine, nobody ever considered that many were not taking it because they were so recently lied to about opiates (or had a friend or family member affected). Seems obvious the connection that in rural areas you had lower vaccine uptick and higher opiate addiction rates. I wonder why they don’t trust pharma and take the shot! Probably because they know more people that are addicted to opiates than people hospitalized by COVID! Probably because they know way more people that died of opiates than died of COVID! Trusting pharma got family/friends killed when it came to pain treatment, why should they listen to pharma re COVID treatment? Yet the snobs of the world mocked them for “doing their own research “.
It seems to me that the main culprit, and the main reason for the huge jump in overdoses of late, has been the ease of getting Fentanyl. From the graph in the article, it seems that prescription opiate overdose level has held at the same level for 20+ years. It seems that the ire should be directed at China and the cartels
America has become a spiritually vacuous society (and I’m not talking about the belief in the dogma of a certain religion). C.J. Jung called alcoholism (and any other addiction) spiritus contra spiritum – seeking a false spirit for the genuine spirit. Until Americans wrap their heads around why this is, we will continue adding one more nail in the American coffin.
And, when you look at Alexander Tytler’s Cycle of a Democracy (and yes, we were supposed to be a Constitutional Republic), we are headed for full dependency on the government. And then it’s all over and back to bondage we go. But, the next cycle after bondage is Spirituality, because when you are in prison and want to be free, spirituality – the belief that God exists so anything is possible – including freedom from bondage. Maybe we could choose to skip over dependency and bondage and get back into spirituality?
As Jung once said, "I don't need to Believe in God, I KNOW God exisits." That's a personal thing and maybe a soul level thing.
But, you are absolutely right that America is losing world power and deserves her comeuppance because….We the People (Americans) are the Heirs of the American Experiment and We are Squandering Our American Inheritance!
Liz. I have never really known what the American 'inheritance' means.
Your country was founded on greed. For many years 1/4 of the public didn't even bother to vote. They did not think that the US experiments would ever stop which is why you are now in the mess you are in.
We were founded on principles of individual liberty, recognizing that we were all born with inherent rights. Our Constitution limits the power of government in order to maintain that liberty.
Unfortunately, it's all gone sideways & THAT is because of greed, a greed for wealth & power.
Thank you Dr Matt Bivons for writing this and Matt Taibbi for publishing it.
As someone who’s been in recovery for many years now and who once had a $400 a day opioid (dilaudid) habit, I can tell you firsthand that our country has never seen an epidemic this massive or destructive. If there was another country shelling the United States and killing 100,000+ citizens a year I can assure you there would be an all out scorched earth campaign against them by the US military and the public would be arm in arm in full support. But addiction is messy, shameful and still stigmatized and as a result, doesn't get the funding and priority from Washington. Since the prescription crackdown that started some years ago, the Chinese and the Mexican cartels have ramped up importing tons of poisonous fentanyl and now xylazine into our country doing irreparable damage to our communities and loved ones. Clearly we have a huge demand side in the US and I'm not downplaying that, but we desperately need to ramp up our interdiction efforts.
The Sackler family, the board of directors at Pfizer and any other executives who've been complicit in fueling and profiting from this epidemic should all be on death row right now awaiting lethal injection. These psychopaths and the companies they run are worse than war criminals….they are the modern day mass murderers and should be treated as such. If we sent these people to prison or life or to be put to death, I can promise you things in the board room, marketing departments and sales conferences would get different quick.
The families that have lost loved ones to these drugs are simply ignored by our politicians because they receive so much money from the big pharma lobbyist and its easy to stigmatize the person who's become addicted. It’s truly criminal.
Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag and Leighton Woodhouse have some great articles concerning how we address the demand and treatment/recovery side of this and are all worth reading over on the Public substack .
Its clear to me that addiction must be addressed from all sides but unfortunately as a society we are falling short. Lets hope something changes so that we can turn the tide of this tragedy that continues to grow and break our hearts.
And then there are people like me, who live in serious chronic pain due to accidents that have lifelong effects, who can’t get adequate pain relief because someone somewhere might get addicted.
I took 200mg of morphine daily for years before neuroscience came along with a device that literally gave me my life back.
I told my anesthesiologist I wanted off the morphine and had a couple of months of step down, the last two weeks of which were not pleasant, and that was that.
If the device fails for some mechanical reason and it’s a weekend I am shit out of luck.
I feel for those who get addicted but I’m also outraged that people like me are assumed drug seekers.
This is a really important perspective. The opioid addiction problem started because we have a really nasty chronic pain problem. Before we start panicking about a few people getting high from these drugs we need a plan for the people who need them to live.
The de facto legalization of heroin in some states while prescription opioids are treated like Pu-239 is baffling.
It makes me think the addiction excuse is a veil for something else.
"The de facto legalization of heroin in some states'?
Are you referring to decriminalization? That's always been a horrible idea, a half-assed measure that has led thousands of addicts to migrate to and use publicly in those places that have adopted this stupid policy. It does nothing to police the black market sale of Fentanyl or other drugs purported to be "heroin."
What the half-measure of decriminalization + de facto impunity for retailers creates is the worst of all possible policy solutions: the monopoly over the supply is retained by criminals who benefit from the price support of illegality, with little threat that their activities will be penalized by law enforcement.
I think we can do better than simply legalizing all opioids for legal sale. But that would be an improvement over both user decrim supplied by the criminal monopoly AND a return to the sad old ineffective status quo of Drug War Prohibition. With full legalization, at least there would be a selection of opioids available that are less lethal than the ultrapowerful fentanyls.
Restricting access to pain killers for people in pain to prevent recreational users from getting their kicks is wrong. People in pain shouldn't have to be Heroisch.
Yes. A huge downside of the craze to reduce opioid prescriptions is that people who genuinely have to have them end up being denied. And just suffer. There is a move to assert other remedies (from NSAIDS to yoga) are just as good and sometimes they are, but too often not. Some people must have opioid and the addiction tradeoff is justified, far better than being in pain.
Taking prescription meds from pain patients doesn't decrease Addicts! Addiction isn't a trade off. Chronic pain patients are not Addicts. Recognize An Addict takes anything & wants more, more to get high. Recognize an Addict isn't taking med for pain . They take it to get high & their supply is Street drugs, Street Fentanyl is #1... it's cheap. But these are not chemist mixing street drugs. The street drugs may be strong, so strong it would kill an elephant. or a batch may be weak. weak. Sadly a person with addictive trait will display addictive behavior...they want to get high & constantly seek a better high
Drug Addiction like Alcoholism are disease entities.
Taking away pain meds meds, prescribed & taken as ordered is cruel. They don't seek a high...and a months supply last one month. An Addict would take a months supply in a day or two .
It would be great if we knew who has the addictive trait before they feel their first high.
I had to have a genetic analysis performed to see if I have “markers” for addictive psychology. Required.
The report itself is interesting for what is says and what it doesn’t.
It isn't just that street fentanyl is inexpensive. It's become the only product on the street market.
I've always hated the term "drug seekers" as a quick way to minimize and dismiss people without any evaluation or critical thinking.
Thanks to state and federal law and regulations I have little to no hope of getting help from a medical professional except my neurosurgeon or anesthesiologist if something goes wrong with the device.
For those with privacy concerns, that was thrown out the window by Trump’s administration.
Every opioid prescription goes from the physician to a state agency, at which the patient’s medical history is stored, where the prescription is approved or denied before being forwarded to the pharmacy. Some faceless bureaucrat has the final say regarding whether or not that prescription is filled. There is no appeal or even method to contact those bureaucrats or their bosses.
People trumpeting the privacy invasion of the censorship regime as if it’s something new amuse me. Where were you in 2017/2018?
You're suffering from a regime of overcompensation. And also some cognitive dissonance, as a side effect.
If there had been accountability across state lines for opioid prescriptions in the late 1990s, the Oxy problem would have been nipped in the bud, because the vast majority of it was the result of unethical script docs writing prescriptions for mass quantities to dealers who diverted it to the street market. The DEA couldn't track their own Schedule II Federally controlled substances- because regulation was left to the separate states, and some of them, like Florida and Tennessee, had practically no accountability enforcement.
Along about 2014, the Feds finally began to put a regime of accountability for opioid prescriptions in place. And, as bureaucracies so often do in the aftermath of negligence, the DEA has started off by overdoing it- cracking down on prescriptions of opioids, even to people with legitimate chronic pain needs.
That said, folks should know that opioids of one sort or another are still among the most heavily prescribed classes of drugs. Opioids aren't going anywhere; for most pain conditions, they're still the most effective painkillers out there.
Also, to be fair to Donald Trump (not Presidential material, imo) the latest Federal crackdown on opioid prescriptions actually began in the Obama era.
The current regime of "drug control" is folly stacked on top of folly. There's no need for bupenorphine prescriptions to cost hundreds of dollars a month, for instance. That's just more profiteering. The only reason why fentanyl dominates the street market is because street addicts have no other recourse. It isn't like there's some selection of milder products available in the illicit marketplace. Most street retail markets, it's fentanyl or nothing. In the 1960s, at least it was possible to purchase mild opioid cough medicines from drug stores.
Huge amen. Even all the freight that accompanies "drug addicts" paints an often inaccurate picture.
I know a gal who willfully put her hand onto a hot stove burner just so she could get drugs. True story, she is an ex-gf. We met in rehab.
The drugs change the brain...even with a single use.....they are caught in a trap.....
No, use for post surgical pain does not create craving or addition. Go have a root canal sans powerful painkillers and get back to us.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
The Federal government's own survey statistics indicate that about 80% of people who experiment with opioids for recreational purposes are able to walk away from them without being addicted.
I think illegality does currently put a damper on repeating experiments of that sort too frequently; I don't support full-scale legalization of all opioids. But it has to be admitted that even most recreational users are able to keep from getting addicted. It also has to be said that the massive marketplace in illicit drugs does not do ID checks, and the population most vulnerable to addiction are users who had their first exposure as teenagers.
This is exactly what brought me here to comment. I hear more and more stories of people who can't get painkillers that work when they have very painful ailments. "You may die screaming, but you'll be pure" seems like it might not be a consolation to everyone.
Any MD who refuses or under prescribes opiates for pain ought to be forced to undergo the same ordeal.
Same for DEA agents and craven, ignorant politicians.
Suicide is very common among those of us living this life.
I'm 10 years in due to injury, Marie. I'd like to be more specific, but hell, me using my real name and all makes for public preclusion. Know for certain though, my empathy is genuine, 24/7/365. If you are getting good (sufficient) results from a TENS, that's wonderful. If it is something more sophisticated I haven't heard of, I'd sure like to be apprised if you have the inclination. Sincere best wishes to you.
TENS did nothing for me at all. The device is an implanted spinal cord stimulator and it’s been an absolute Godsend for me. It’s specific to neuropathy so it’s not for everyone but for me, it literally gave me my life back. I’m working full time, got my leg strength and balance back, and live a relatively normal life.
In the space of 14 months I went from housebound to employed, etc.
It has its downsides, life is always a trade off, but I’m glad I took the plunge.
My adult daughter has a progressive degenerative neurological disorder. She had a spinal cord stimulator, which helped her dramatically for several years. These days, she's in debilitating pain all the time. And, when she goes to refill her medications from her Palliative doc, the restrictions are odious, and she feels like "a drug seeker," although a quick glance at her medical history would belie that. I understand the INTENT of these strict guardrails for prescribers & pharmacists. But it regularly places the pain patient in a very humiliating position. I don't know the answer. But pain is pain. And we as a society need to figure it out.
I’m so sorry to hear it stopped working for your daughter. Pain like that is unimaginable to almost everyone.
I hear you about the degradation we face. Heaven forbid a voluntary addict’s behavior be criticized as it might cause “harm” while your daughter’s real and involuntary suffering is ignored.
It’s a crazy world.
That's really great to hear, thank you for responding. I'm still holding out hope even at this late stage of the game (for me.) It's good to know there might be options yet, I decided against fusion several years ago myself. Like you said, "It's a trade-off," and I most certainly agree. Glad to know you are doing well. Peace be yours!
If it is not too intrusive, what brand is it?
Boston Scientific
And if SCS isn’t for you I hope the big brains’ next discovery applies to you!
I take 20 mg per day of hydrocodone, plus Lyrica and indomethacin for my pain. It is harder and harder to get my meds. And it's not like I want lots of drugs. I used to take 40 mg per day but I worked with my doctors to take less. One benefit is that I am not constipated any more.
Marie, is it possible for you to have some painkiller on hand, in case your dreaded weekend mechanical failure scenario presents?
Alas no. If I were caught with that I’d be under the jail.
See? That's just ignorant. They make my sister jump through hoops to get meds, & if there's a glitch & she runs out, oh well. The people making these stupid laws & regulations have no empathy whatsoever.
That’s the inevitable consequence of bureaucratic involvement I think.
My best to your sister. Neuropathic pain is beyond bad. I thought 48 hours of labor without so much as a Tylenol was as bad as it could be until my accident. How little I knew.
Reporting is so mixed up. They report as if every person given opiates/opioids will be an Addict.
Every one who takes a drink does not become an Alcoholic.
An addict seeks drugs, runs out, wants more..Always MORE, more, more.Anythingbto get high. They don't pick up a prescription. at the pharmacy
They report as if Fentanyl is a killer. Fentanyl is an old drug. It was used in OR in the 70s. Very safe in the prescribed dose.
The crisis of death , the killer opioids, are illicit, street drugs. Street Fentanyl is easy to mix but when nixed in street labs no one knows how potent a batch may be until people start dying from one pill.
Sadly an addict resorts to street drugs to stay high...street Fentanyl is cheap ,& deadly.
A chronic pain patient who receives a prescription for 30 days.. and takes meds as ordered. The prescription lasts 30 days. They are not drug addicts seeking a high....they take pain meds to have a better quality of life.
FYI if a person has the addictive trait you will know quickly...they will take anything to get high.. Alcohol, street drugs, crack ... or street Fentanyl. They don't get meds at local pharmacy! A prescription for 30 would last a day & the addict seeks more, more, more...
My sister is in chronic pain from ankylosing spondylitis, among other things, & she has a heck of a time getting pain relief. They've made it very difficult for people who actually need pain meds to get them. She's in a pain management program, & every once in a while, there's some sort of glitch with communications between the doctor's office and the pharmacy, & she's in a world of hurt while out of meds. She recently switched from Vicodin to Dilaudid.
Do you have a Spinal Cord Stimulator?
There would be no drug trade in Mexico worth talking about, if it were not for Americans' insatiable appetite for drugs.
Fair argument, but not that binary. These drugs aren't like having a drink or smoking a little weed. These kids try them and after as little as 5 days of use, they are physically addicted to them.....and they are incredibly deadly.
I have a nephew now in his 40s, he got addicted to Oxy when in middle school. My sister has lived in a guilt-ravaged world ever since. All these years of waiting for. . . . the Call. Many, many rehab attempts futile. The kids get the worst of it, their brains are sponges for Oxy addiction, they get hooked early and seemingly irrevocably. A life sentence. So fucking sad, so helpless for family.
Rubbish. Most of the time it is because of allergy to Morphine.
Not here to argue with anyone......its just my experience and my 2 cents. Which is probably overpriced. :-) Cheers.
Tolerance to opiates is built rapidly and that’s how people end up with $400/day habit just to face the day. I worked in detox and suboxone really helped but if it’s stopped, the cravings for the drug are so bad it sends detoxed people directly back to the drug when they’re released. It’s a terrible problem.
It's not so much "craving for the drug" as wanting relief from the horrible anxiety and insomnia/restlessness that comes along with withdrawal.
The depression that frequently attends detoxification leads to more use, unfortunately. One's ability to cope with this and the intensity of the desire to quit (or lack of it) determines whether one starts using again. Also, if the conditions that make using appealing are not removed (boredom, grinding poverty, existential hopelessness, no future prospects, etc.) "relapse" is likely.
The nuance to your statement is that there are circumstances within people's lives that lead to the desire to use drugs likes heroin and fentynal. They are not all rock stars who can afford the heavy usage and recovery. Some are tricked (peer pressured or enticed), coerced, come from broken families, have mental health issues similarly caused by myriad circumstances.
It's a very difficult problem to solve, if not unsolvable. I cringe in saying it's one way to chip away at the overpopulation issue. However, there are far more humane ways to mitigate that and I feel for those who lost loved ones to drug overdose/addiction. It's a terrible plague against humanity.
Two words: "Rat Park". Nobody seems to ask *why* do Americans have such an insatiable appetite for drugs?
For that matter, I understand that meth is making a comeback, and I don't think too many methheads got their start with doctor-prescribed methamphetamine. Maybe I am wrong.
I also understand that The New Hotness in opioids is "tranq" (aka Fentanyl and Xylazine), and I don't think Xylazine is approved for human use. (There's also benzo dope, which is Fentanyl mixed with benzodiazepines, and benzos can be obtained via prescription but I don't think many people got hooked on legal benzos and then decided to mix in fent).
"I don't think many people got hooked on legal benzos and then decided to mix in fent" I can tell you that's very much the case with many many addicts. Dope hopping is totally part of the addiction pathway, just like when we started drinking beer, some of us went to whiskey, or when we started using a little coke, moved to crack cocaine or meth. It's very normal for those with addiction problems to have a progression path like that.
The bigger question of "why" we have such an appetite is a topic that is vast and way outside my punt coverage. Have a great day man.
Why ? I think because we are trying to escape a very ill, toxic society with skewed values and false gods....when you have to use all of your energy to protect yourself and your children from the idiocy around you and them, it becomes an exhausting effort. One can create a loving "bubble" in ones' home, but eventually you have to send your offspring out into the madness beyond the door.....many lack the armour and coping skills to deal with what they must encounter....three quarters of a century have taught me that one clear thing......and it is not always possible to instill all the necessary things to survive....the unknowns they now face have become deadly, deadly.... as their need to experiment is the only way to truly learn a thing until they become experienced enough to recognize inherent dangers and pitfalls....our "Society " is 'culling the herd before our children are even fully born into Life. ( Excuse my diatribe)
And your point about the "ill, toxic society" is bigger than our ill, toxic society can admit: "it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society."
No apology needed. Your experience is real and valuable. Thank you for chiming in.
Why do Americans have such an appetite for drugs? Actually, humans have a propensity for addiction--we've seen it with TV, mass media, engineered super-palatable foods, sugar, alcohol...
What's sort of unique ("exceptional" according to J. Stalin) about America is the profit machine is so finely tuned, and the sociopaths (as the author called them) at the ready to shunt the money their way.
It also raises the question why we see such levels of addiction in America more than in other developed countries.
America is in deep trouble culturally.
A criminalized subculture of tens of millions of children laid the groundwork for the pariah subculture between the 1960s and the 1980s. But even after 25 years of underground economy and subterfuge, our opioid addiction problems were relatively minor, up until the Oxycontin era. Not negligible, but relatively minor. About on par with what they were in the late 19th century.
Oxy really did change the game in the mid-1990s. By the early 2000s, more 15 year olds were having their first (non-alcohol, non-tobacco) "drug experience" with prescription opioid pills than were trying pot. Setting aside the overdose death and addiction part and considered on a "bang for your buck" basis, hard drugs have been cheaper to get high on than pot for around the past 40 years. When Oxy first came in, a pill was cheaper than a joint of sinsemilla or a pint of whiskey. $10 for a 40mg Oxy, that was stronger than a bag of street heroin, and it lasted longer.
I keep up; I read the annual University of Michigan Monitoring The Future, SAMHSA and ONDCP surveys (none of those sites make it easy to navigate to the pages where the surveys are. I find that baffling. But all of those reports can be found online.)
One piece of good news that has been practically absent from the headlines is that most teenagers have gotten the message about how dangerous opioids are- particularly the fentanyl-tainted counterfeit pills. Teenage experimentation has dropped off drastically; it's less than 1/3 of what it was ten years ago. A fact that almost never gets mentioned by the news media. My local news reports on every high school overdose incident, but I've never once heard any news report mention that the teenage opioid user population is much, much lower than it was in the late 1990s-2015.
But if you read my post above Feral. In the USA I was NEVER offered a similar painkiller.
Did you not read the article?
Nope not you, the comment was directed to the lead post. And I hope all of my comments are understood as directed at the argument and not the person.
IF you are talking to me Art. Morphine does not work if you are allergic.
Progressives will say, "Well you do know there are just too many people on the planet?"
I'm not progressive in the slightest and I do believe there are too many people. However, before you blast me for being misanthropic, my perspective is influenced by maximizing available resources, quality of life, and real human progress - for all.
I would prefer people make better choices on their own than to dictate those choices to them. Alas, a progressive would say, "that's the problem right there."
Can we give the "stuffing words in the mouths of the partisan opposition" thing a rest, already? Inventing cheap shots is just bogus. Whichever partisan side does it.
Well, maybe not too many people, per se, but too many of the wrong kind. I'm kinda okay with idiots killing themselves and dismantling big pharma at the same time
I believe this is the CIA's position as well, minus the "dismantling big pharma" part.
Well, I'm not CIA. And dismantling big pharma is a much bigger priority. I don't want people to die, but the ones who can't learn a pretty simple lesson aren't worth spending much on
My son died at 25 in 2017 from an accidental Fentanyl overdose. He was many things but he definitely was not an idiot. This isn't just happening to drug users and people on the street, we've lost way too many young, smart, promising "kids next door" from this epidemic.
Okay, but I bet that fentanyl didn't come from a pharmacy. And while there was much we didn't know in 2017, we do now. Taking anything not from a pharmacy is easy enough to understand now
I’m very sorry for your loss. Every parent’s worst nightmare.
Unless you've lived it, you have no idea. It never ends but I have 2 daughters and a wife who all need the best version of me I can bring, so bring it I do. People always say, "Life goes on." Now I know what they mean by that statement. It will never be as full, as kind or as hopeful a life but it definitely goes on and you have two choices. I choose to live it the best I can.
I’ve survived a lot but never faced that one.
I’ve never known what to say to that loss except I’m sorry. It’s genuine sorrow.
Sorry you were one of the victims of pharma. Were you started on pain meds for something minor or major? I ask because I find it interesting how many minor injuries were the start of opiate addiction. I had some minor orthopedic sports related surgeries and was always offered, sometimes even pressed, to take opiates. Totally understand if you don’t want to share on a public forum btw
Thanks. It was a long and ugly road to recovery, but today my life is really good. I was prescribed them after a surgery. This was early on the the oxy days and I was terribly over prescribed by the doctor. I don't really believe it was his fault as he was listening to what the pharma reps were telling him and what the FDA was saying early on. I became physically and mentally addicted in less than 2 weeks of using them. I eventually went to buying them on street which led to a 6 year, nose down, full throttle, into the side of the mountain tail spin that almost killed me. Again, recovery is possible but not easy. My substack posts are based only on recovery as I have a passion to share that there is hope and a great life in recovery from chronic addiction. Have a great day.
Evan’s, speaking as someone who has enjoyed and/or benefited from your contributions here, may I say how glad I am you are still among us. What a harrowing battle you’ve had.
Thank you.
I read the book "Dope Sick." The main take-away is that for many years there were only a few people raising hell about this - or trying to draw attention to what was really happening.
One analogy might be the stock analyst who always knew Bernie Madoff was a fraud and running a Ponzi scheme. He did everything he could think of to expose him and stop him ... and was ignored over and over.
I feel like that guy with some of my Covid stories!
Thanks for sharing. Sadly I think doctors still readily advise opiates after most surgeries. That has been my experience with 3 ortho surgeries. I don’t think the risk / reward is solid for opiates after surgery. Reward: less pain for a couple weeks. Risk: addiction and corresponding life devistated , possibly death
Give me the opioids. Ive taken Percocet (5mg oxycodone) for a few weeks at a time twice due to injuries. Didn't overdo it, one or two a day. No addictive effects, tapered naturally as pain diminished.
There is addiction risk and it's a tradeoff. Med literature that I have read mentions that there are times where the addiction is a better choice than otherwise unmanageable pain. Should be between you and your doctor.
Indeed, "There are times where the addiction is a better choice than otherwise unmanageable pain. Should be between you and your doctor."
100%. Unfortunately, this fact is usually overlooked in most discussions of the "crisis."
We have a crisis of purpose and meaning, a chaotic society, and ineffectual, craven, corrupt "leaders." Opiate addiction is a symptom of this. The rate of addiction is directly proportional to the general level of despair.
All that. You and I share the same outlook on our era.
People who appoint themselves to "solve" any crisis end up stomping on other people in their zeal to craft a solution and be seen as doing such. No matter what you do to solve a problem it is guaranteed that unintended negative consequences will occur.
And on that topic, you don't often notice people that suggest doing nothing can be, though not ideal, better than any alternative.
Overregulating opioids has been utterly unfair to people who have a legitimate need for them, and pretending that other alternatives are just as good when they're not so you can reduce prescription numbers and thus claim "success" at the expense of inflicting pain on other people is a crime.
Good you know your limits. Personally I never had a problem. In fact I got tired of them long before 2 weeks was out and had no problem quitting.
I was burned between 5 to 10 percent of my body. Second and third degree. Even with opiates I was in pain. That is when I discovered Oxy was shite. It is like crack, you go up and crash. I had to ask for codeine, just to have the 6-8 hour relief that allowed me to sleep. The first week was hellish.
Without opiates however, I would have gone into shock from the pain. I don't believe we should keep surgical/cancer/burn patients from opiods just because someone somewhere can get addicted. Maybe we should go back to milder opiates with a longer half-life in the bloodstream.
This misguided program didn't help.... https://time.com/4292290/how-obamacare-is-fueling-americas-opioid-epidemic/
"I became physically and mentally addicted in less than 2 weeks of using them."
Not to diminish your account of suffering, but while you may have WANTED more oxycodone once your pain was resolved ("mentally addicted" as you put it), you would have discovered that there are no withdrawal symptoms with only 2 weeks daily use.
Not everyone enjoys the opiate effect. These folks are able to stop using once their prescriptions expire.
I reiterate...you are Brave...thank you....and honest...
I’m glad you made it out! You have an important story to tell.
Yes....exactly. My son was a D1 Collegiate soccer player and member of our National Team. He suffered an ACL injury in college, had surgery and became addicted to Oxycontin. He graduated and started working so had money to secure drugs once his pain medication from MD's grift ran it's course. He bought what he thought was Oxy on the street but it turned out to be fentanyl. I'm aware of at least two other HS classmates of his who have also died from fentanyl poisoning. We live in a very affluent community. Our government clearly doesn't care about this. The perps (Sackler family) are buying their way out of prison by paying fines representing a fraction of their wealth.
Thanks for sharing this Evan. I’ve got a similar situation but different experience with opioids. In 2017 I suffered a traumatic back injury, fracturing three vertebra, one of which was categorized as the worst of the burst compressions while the other two were merely bad burst compressions. I was briefly paralyzed below the waist but movement came back within and hour and full movement, sensation the next day. It occured overseas and required a med jet for extraction back to the States. I’ve seen multiple neuro’s for chronic pain, although I could be standing next to you and you wouldn’t know I was a 5 or 7 of 10- it becomes a new normal so you just carry on. I’ve been on opioids, Gabapentin, multiple muscle relaxants, prescription NSAIDs and use non THC (and sometime THC) CBD gummies. Just saw the same surgeon that did the fusion surgery for Tiger Woods last week for another opinion and still a no for any type of surgery. So more PT and my mini pharma of drugs for like
Back in 2017, all the fuss about opioids hadn’t peaked and I left the receiving ER with scripts for Oxy, Hydro, Tylenol III and Tramadol. I could refill any whenever I needed, up the dosage amounts, drop them, etc with no major pushback. But I’ll add that I am also a recovering alcoholic (23 years on June 4th) and sensitive to addiction issues. After settling in to a routine for pain management and just dealing with one primary doctor for my back, we dropped all the opioids but Hydrocodone 10/325 3x daily. Sometimes 4x, sometimes 5x but at the time, the Fed hadn’t tightened the screws on doctors prescribing. But that was short lived and now, I’m pretty much stuck at 3x 10/325 as my doc is very reluctant to go up in the 90 per month. Which really kind of sucks as I’ve definitely built up a tolerance and while some days are only a 2x day, I have more 4x and 5x days than 2x or 3x ones as I still work full time (outside tech sales). And trying to change out to Oxy (which I really don’t like) or try time release fentanyl patches is just not going to happen. So I’m stuck and hence have upped the NSAID use and supplement with legal and quasi legal (and totally unregulated) CBD gummies.
Where we differ and maybe it’s dosage, but I do not find Hydrocodone addictive. I am at the point where I get to experience withdrawal every month now, usually for just about a week but I start tapering off when I’m down to 6-8 pills and then reserve 2 for the last days before being out. At worst is an hour or so of stomach cramps and maybe one night of restless sleeping but I get no seeking type behavior that would have me trying to find them on the street. I had months of angst after I quit drinking, with little triggers and stuff that I’d fight through. I went through rehab and a little AA. I don’t really get anything like that with the opioids and as I mentioned, I get to quit every month for a week or so before I refill. If my doc said, “that’s it, your done” I’d be very disappointed but I wouldn’t start shooting up. I’d just no that life was going to be several degrees more painful than it had been.
In rehab I learned a lot about addiction and some of it is more habit than addiction, ie more behavioral. Not saying that is 100% with opioid users/abusers but it plays an important role. And some folks are just unwilling to change parts of their behavior they can control. Like a homeless person given the choice of a warm shelter on a cold winter night v sleeping on the street and they opt for the cold. You just can’t fix them. But for users in scenarios following a surgery or some event where short term prescribed opioids make sense for pain relief, behavioral therapy shoud be able to mitigate any addiction issues with tapering off of the medicines involved. The street abusers are gonna do what they do. Basically, there needs to be a middle ground for folks like you and I caught up in the middle of all of this. As much as I would love to drop my meds for a month or two, just to see how I could manage, I am literally afraid to do so, since there is no guarantee I could get the prescription started up again.
Understand and thank you for sharing. I just had to get to the point where I was totally off of them. I couldn't control my intake over any prolonged period of time....it would always get out of control. I just have an addictive disposition about me that I've had since I was a child. We all get to deal with these hurdles in life in the best manor that fits our situations thank goodness. Have a great night.
Nothing’s going to change as long as the C_IA is using the money for black ops just like they have been since the 50’s. In fact they’re still transporting drugs in from South America Asia Thailand and others in military jets so I’m sorry to say nothing will change as long as government benefits from the sales. For anyone interested it’s called Operation Gladio and bush sr setup the contacts and transportation while he was in the agency up until he became VP for Reagan.
Right. Those Pfizer creeps hold down innocent victims and force-feed them opiates.
I have no love for "big pharma" and its obviously unethical marketing of useless or dangerous Coof vaccines, but opiate manufacturers and doctors who prescribe them are not responsible for the large number of users, addicts and overdoses. Likewise, those who overdose on prescribed opiates are responsible for their own deaths. Those who become victims of black market dealers and their unmeasured, impure drugs are not. Relying on illegal supplies is the direct result of prohibition.
Imagine if you could have got your Dilaudid legally. You would not have paid that much to maintain your addiction and it would have been nowhere near as "messy, shameful or stigmatized."
Too true Evans W....follow the money......"Filthy Lucre" as my Mother would say....Good luck with your continued sobriety young man, you are brave....my son didn't make it out alive.
There's a 'ladder' of organization and control in all of the huge industries with corporate media and Big Pharma locked together financially where one can't survive without the other. Follow the ladder up from there and you come to the big banks, Wall Street, and government. Follow the ladder up a couple more steps and you come to the people who own the Central Banks of Europe and the Federal Reserve. They're all in on it. That's why there's no scorched Earth policy to end it, solve it, or fix it. The CIA is the world's largest drug trafficker. Those labs in Mexico, the traffickers who move the precursors to Mexico, the mules who move it across the border into the US, and the media and pharma executives all do what they do and get away with it because they're all clandestinely controlled and manipulated by the dark forces running our government's policies on behalf of the owners of the Central Banks. It sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but Satan literally uses Earth as his playground and his most successful lie is convincing you that he doesn't exist
"As someone who’s been in recovery for many years now and who once had a $400 a day opioid (dilaudid) habit, I can tell you firsthand that our country has never seen an epidemic this massive or destructive."
- Lol. Really? You should have "Just Said No" or gotten mandatory minimum sentencing at the very least.
"Its clear to me that addiction must be addressed from all sides but unfortunately as a society we are falling short. "
- No. Mandatory minimum sentencing.
To bad treatment/recovery was included in Obamacare. Guess some states missed out. :)
Congratulations to you for finding a way out of the addiction abyss. Someone very close to me has, is, and always will be battling an opioid addiction. From what I can tell, recovery entails a complete and very intentional rewiring of the brain. Kicking the habit is indescribably difficult, and as you wrote, compounded by inadequate professional support and above all shame. In addition to knowing someone with an opioid addiction, I live in a land where it is enabled and abetted. Every single day of my life I have to diligently avoid running an addict over. They wander through busy streets right around the corner from my house. Many have been hit and killed in my town. Many. No exaggeration. How is this happening? If you read this comment, will you please share a link or two to the articles you referenced?
How did you afford the habit ?
But they're not on death Row, are they? That tells you All you need to know about the System.
What gets me is a journalist can write a best-selling book ("Dope Sick") about oxycontin and the villainous Purdue Pharmacy owners - a book that's made into a popular TV series - and everyone agrees Big Pharma is very bad and we celebrate the few people who tried to expose this travesty.
But no journalist at a corporate-owned newspaper can write a book about Covid vaccines that have killed far more than 80,000 citizens and have "injured" millions. I mean, it's the same companies committing crimes against humanity.
Basically, we can trust these companies about Covid vaccines (or remdesivir, aka "Run, Death is Near!"), but we all agree these pharmaceutical companies are/were evil when they were peddling dangerous pain killers and making a killing off of those mass deaths.
I don't get it.
Also, it was okay to belatedly expose Theranos and its snake-oil-selling CEO for marketing a bogus blood testing device for more than a decade, but journalists at the Wall Street Journal can't make a few phone calls about remedesivir killing thousands? (I don't think the Theranos "Bad Blood" device killed anyone).
Some scandals are okay to expose, but the really big ones are off limits.
Also, look at the VIP statesmen and business leaders who were on the Theranos board.
We are being led by the obtuse ... and/or the evil.
The latter the psychopathy is prevalent on that level
A Pfizer bigwig was called to testify before the EU parliament. She was asked if the Covid vaccine had been tested before the rollout to see if it prevented transmission. It had not. This seems like a pretty simple question every journalist should have asked. Instead news anchors, comedians, Howard Stern and other deranged celebs lambasted the unvaccinated for a couple of years. Meanwhile, a study out of the Cleveland Clinic found vaccinated people actually more likely to test positive for Covid than the unvaccinated. Never mind!
Thanks for highlighting those IGNORED pieces of, I guess, non-news.
You nailed it. In addition the same mainstream media mocks people that don’t take the vaccine, or try generic drugs as treatment…when it seems logical those are probably the same people victimized by pharma
The Bad Guys have shown their true colors for decades. And the "watchdog press" is running cover for them. Also, being paid off by them.
Watch it now or else they'll start calling the opiods vaccines and then we're all toast.
Big Pharma went all-in on vaccines because they got liability immunity for vaccines in 1986.
And then they got permission to start running TV commercials and so now 50 percent of the advertising revenue for many TV networks probably comes from Big Pharma. (So there went the scathing "Sixty Minutes" expose on Big Pharma's crimes).
Local TV stations probably get 25 percent of their revenue from Plaintiff Trial Lawyers, who get rich suing trucking companies that are involved in fatal crashes. But those "fearless" trial lawyers who stick up for the little guy won't (or can't) sue ... Big Pharma. They are all in the same club.
Can you tell that I now think everything is a racket? (A "protection racket.")
Only politically expedient lives matter.
The corruption of medical journals that only publish the trials their controllers at Big Pharma want them to publish - and not the trials that revealed toxic side-effects of their latest moneyspinner - is (or should be) a major issue. As in politics, those who should be journalists and "gamekeepers" are too often poachers these days.
The election cycle
Very interesting, but missing one salient perspective: from those who are in extreme pain.
My husband has extreme back pain. Tylenol 3&5 offered relief when he needed it. Their intestinal side effects prevented constant use, so he only used them when engaged in activities that agitated his condition or once the pain has begun.
But with all the "opioid hysteria" he can no longer receive any relief from it. Doctors are afraid to prescribe any opioid.
So the pain continues.
Life essentially stops until the pain subsides.
I discovered in my attempts to help, that keeping him on a high protein diet throughout the day can prevent him from going into spasm. High levels of omega 3&6 help, as does cannabis cbds.
But with no access to remediation, once the pain begins, there is no relief except time.
My husband scoffs at the idea of addiction, "being pain free is not an addiction. It's like saying breathing is an addiction..."
As always, nothing is clear cut, but the trend is to ignore the need that exists for pain remediation. The abuse that exists will always exist because those individuals have at their root, different issues. They may be in some pain, and Doctors take an easy one fits all approach that does not fit them, and then blame the medication instead of themselves.
Maybe Morphine does not work for your dear husband. It didn't work for me.
Everytime I go to a Doctor here in Europe. I fill out a form stating allergies: Always Morphine.
We have also eliminated sugar and carbs from our diet. While it is helpful, it has nothing to offer once pain sets in.
My point is, not everyone-- or even the majority, of folks who are prescribed pain killers abuse them. The vast majority use them as needed. To declare these drugs as "addictive" and therefore "bad" is absurd and cruel to this who do need them but can no longer obtain them.
That is a prescription for street fentanyl.
They aren't saving any lives by keeping opioids out of medicine. They are merely making more money by producing cheap synthetic fentanyl and killing more people than ever before.
Those are all good points.
As a practical reality, opioids aren't going anywhere. I'm hopeful that a wider open discussion will eventually lead to a sane, reasonable balance between medicine and law. The problem of opioid addiction is no more to be legislated out of existence than alcoholism is.
Please don’t ignore the inverse relationship between opioid prescriptions vs. drug OD deaths. Americans in severe pain are being deprived of relief. DEA & CDC are the fentanyl cartels’ most effective marketers.
How are people in severe pain being denied relief? Getting opiate prescriptions is easy as can be. I don’t take opiates, don’t want to take opiates, yet get offered and even this crap pushed on me for minor sports related injuries. Dentist will give it to you “in case there is pain” after a filling.
Are you sure about that Big John? Because the DEA have doctors and pharmacies locked down so tight it’s impossible unless you are a patient of a pain management doctor or have severely injured yourself and go to an ER or God forbid have cancer. GP’s can’t prescribe the hard stuff the only thing they can prescribe is tramadol. Yes I have firsthand experience because I’ve got multiple bad discs just had both knees replaced and next will probably be a hip. Car accidents and workplace injuries, my bad though who knew it was a bad idea to carry 50# bales of wire on your shoulders.😁 Driving a big truck for a few decades hasn’t help either the roads are so bad now. That’s been my experience anyway.
Easy? BS.
Have you asked for an option prescription lately???
My niece has stage 4 cancer and is extreme pain. She has to physically get up and go to her doctor every single month to get a new prescription because they can't write one with refills. She's so ill that that is impossible some months and then she goes through withdrawals in addition to the pain.
Oh yeah. It's "so easy". Not!
Even in Colorado, which passed legislation to protect drs effectively controlling severe pain, DEA intimidation causing 75 yr old veteran in terrible disabling pain to be undertreated—what idiot at CDC decided you could stop teenagers from becoming addicts by depriving oldsters pain meds?
The same idiot that decided to mandate vaccines for young healthy workers for COVID which had an average age of death of over 80.
Doctor-patient experiences vary widely. But on the whole, there's definitely much more restriction than there was ten years ago.
but why don't people criticize and change these agencies? Everyone focusses on the Sacklers.
At my Substack, I wrote a book review of "The Real Anthony Fauci" where I called this book perhaps "the most-important non-fiction book of my lifetime." I stand by that statement, not because RFK, Jr. eviscerates Anthony Fauci or chronicles all the Covid response lies, but because he does such a persuasive job showing how the entire U.S. Science and Medicine Establishment has been completely captured ... by Big Pharma.
He also provides important historical context on how this happened. It all dates back to the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation and the beginning of the "pill for every ill" movement. He also reminds us that President Eisenhower warned about the capture of science and medicine by the government in his famous farewell address, warning about the Military Industrial Complex.
In his follow-up, he develops the theme that the Military Industrial Complex effectively merged with the Science/Medicine/Big Pharma/Intelligence Community Complex.
It's the worst of all nightmare scenarios. Basically, "public health" has never been worse in America in my lifetime. And it's only going to get worse.
Other excellent books have told some of the same story, but it was Kennedy who wrote the book that made this a "mainstream" topic.
P.S. Despite 24-7, 365-day Propoganda Campaigns going on four years ... "Vaccine hesitancy" has never been higher ... The numbers are still too small, but more people ARE starting to question Big Pharma. There's probably a reason all those Big Pharma investors have the best bug-out shelters in New Zealand.
I lost my 22 year old niece to opioids 5 years ago. So much Hell preceded that. Her admissions to her parents that she traded sex for opioids. The fact that her sisters had to install deadbolts on their bedroom doors because she would steal their money. The day her & her boyfriend broke into her parent's home & stole everything that wasn't bolted down. Pointless trip after pointless trip through rehab until the last one. That was the one that seemed to take. Her parents even let her live back at home. Then one morning her dad went to wake her. She had her 1st job interview in...well, probably ever. She was lying dead on her bedroom floor.
She was committing suicide in slow motion ever since her teens. Whatever her pain was it didn't disappear with her death. She just passed it on to her family. Her dad is buried in videogames & sports, her mother needs psychotropics to cope and one of her younger sisters is perilously close to suicide from a combination of her sister's death, crushing student debt, failed love affairs, etc.
In my opinion the respectable sociopaths who unleashed this shit on the world should currently be in Rikers getting their teeth punched out for all of those future blow jobs they're going to be giving.
Fuck 'em all with a rusty nail studded 2x4 straight to Hell.
For clarity's sake I should point out that my niece's first forays into drug use weren't through weed or even opioids. Early in high school she started buying drugs like Prozac because, according to her, they were everywhere. Most of her friends had anti-depressant scrips.
Which makes me wonder who in their right mind thought that giving those powerful drugs of dubious efficacy to a bunch of high schoolers was a good idea? Did they have emotional mood swings of great intensity? Last I looked that was called puberty & I doubt that one can drug their way out of it.
The opioids came later.
It is definitely possible that antidepressants are overprescribed, but believe me, if your kid needs them, and they work, it makes such a huge difference in their quality of life.
I'll have to take your word for it.
Look at it this way, I opened Matt's article and it brought back memories I wasn't planning on having that morning.
It doesn't take much to resurrect the buried rage so, if I were you, I wouldn't take my comment all that seriously.
I lost my nephew to a heroin overdose more than 20 years ago, & we just buried his son about a month ago. He also died of an overdose, leaving an 8 year old son who will now grow up without a dad. He'd been in & out of rehab & we all thought he was doing great. He was working, going to church, going to all his son's sports events. That's how he was found: he didn't show up to a game, & the boy's mom knew something was wrong. His son was everything to him. They found him slumped over a table. So many lives ripped apart over these dumb drugs. It's just so sad.
It's a common story in my area.
My best friend used to describe his heroin use as "crawling back into the womb."
I never got it.
I never wanted to get it.
You have my condolences.
It's not the drugs, per se: it's desperation. These people are in psychic or physical pain. They see no path forward to achieve what our culture had defined as success. I know it makes no sense to many. But then again, how many of you take an antidepressant? Antianxiety? A stiff drink? A glass of wine or three? Come on: the culture is telling us if you're not a master of the universe, you're a useless POS. (OK. I'm coloring outside the lines, as usual. Also. I worked in an emergency room & healthcare for many years.) There's no one answer. Dammit. I hate that part.
"Opioid overdoses accelerated amidst the despair of COVID-19 lockdowns."
This really should be talked about more. The data is irrefutable:
- Year over year, 911 calls for opioid-related overdoses increased 250% between 2019 and 2020. Some hospital emergency departments saw an increase in overdose cases as high as 1,000%.
- In March 2020, overdose deaths rose 18%; in April, 29%; in May, 42%. These were the most draconian months of the pandemic.
- By July of 2020 a total of 35 states had reported substantial increases in opioid-related mortality.
https://www.euphoricrecall.net/p/a-sad-soul-can-kill-you-quicker-than
And this was all predicted ... by experts who were, of course, censored as "disinformation" spreaders.
Of course! All those goofy Hollywood celebrities in their mansions with their huge gardens & pools & tennis courts were all over social media telling us to just pull together, & everything would be fine. We'll all sing "Imagine" & we'll get through this.
The truth is, many people live in tiny apartments, with multiple generations. Kids couldn't go to school, adults couldn't go to work, the pervy uncle was eyeing the children. . . When these folks were confined to quarters (not even allowed to visit the closest park!), domestic violence calls went up, alcohol & drug abuse went up -- and overdoses & suicides went up.
Wow! Who could have seen that coming?
To quote William Burroughs "Heroin is the ideal product. The customer will crawl through a sewer and beg you to sell to him."
What the pharma industry wants is more and more new patents, forever. I'd rather use a drug as prescribed that has been around for generations, with a well-established risk/benefit safety profile, than take my chances with the ever more questionable, newly developed, patented and obscenely over-priced products that they call "safe & effective", while they spend billions on deceptive advertising and fraudulent studies, all designed to push their latest crap on an unsuspecting public. Fool me once shame on you, fool us all over and over again, and silence and defame anyone who asks legitimate questions about product safety, well, don't get me started.
While the marketing has been abhorrent, and the financial incentives ignored, there remains a legitimate need for (some of) these drugs. After surgery (twice), I benefitted greatly from a 4-7 day availability of "decreasing" Oxycodone use. I also was very aware of the addictive nature of these drugs (not to mention the side effects), and worked as hard as I could to wean myself off of them as quickly as I could. I think education as to the addictiveness (for consumers and the medical experts) is the best path forward.
Risk vs reward: give this to people so they manage their pain after surgery and risk creating an opiate addict. Or let them get thru it with over the counter pain meds. As a society we are better off with the latter
The creation of Narcan also created a situation where someone can be dragged back from a fatal dose. And police, govts and NGOs bought their own supplies of Narcan to counter the epidemic, but what that signaled was that it was a get out of jail free card for those who OD. This is a tidy little scam by the pharma giants to keep their customers alive and addicted.
Gotta be satire.
Wish it was. This is a huge money maker for pharmaceutical companies and overdose deaths have only increased, not decreased since it’s widespread use.
You might be aware that over the counter pain medication, in addition to being less effective can damage your organs. It takes surprisingly little Tylenol to cause liver damage. Too much Advil can cause kidney problems. I was terrified of opioids, and I used to grit it out when I was younger taking OTC pain meds. Advil was my go-to, and now I have kidney disease. Who knows if it’s related, but I’ve had enough. I had kidney stones last year, and I took opioids for the pain. Tylenol didn’t come close to working on kidney-stone-level pain.
Much of the damage ascribed to opiates is actually a product of the near-ubiquitous Tylenol base they are combined with. Most people have no idea how dangerous Tylenol is and how common it has become as it is added to almost every OTC cold medicine, allergy med, etc out there.
The second sentence is accurate. I was shocked when I found out how little Tylenol it takes to cause permanent and severe liver damage, and it’s in lots of OTC medicine. The first sentence, though… Fentanyl is causing plenty of damage by itself without any Tylenol. So did OxyContin.
Why are we talking about the Sackers? There have always been greedy business people and there always will be. We have regulatory agencies to protect ourselves from them. The real story is the massive fail of the regulators. Why don't people know who Janet Woodcock is? Why isn't Janet Woodcock and others from the FDA in jail?
Isn’t it interesting that Taibbi wrote about the sociopaths who blew up our economy around 2008 and yet none of the culprits went to prison, and here is another man writing about the Sacklers (and others) who are also not going to prison. It would seem that the lesson is to not rob a convenience store but rather an entire nation, or to not murder an individual with poison, but rather murder thousands if one want to avoid a prison term. And the culprits in each case also made vast sums off money and kept most of it.
"steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king",,,Bob Dylan,,,from back in the 80s
Read "Chasing the Scream" or "The Biology of Desire" before evaluating this piece. Yes Pharma is like the Military/Industrial complex, and Big Gov, but just like the military problem, and the government, drugs are a symptom, not the problem. Stop pretending that prohibition on any level works.
It seems to work in places like Singapore. Before you scream unfair let me point out that last year the drug related death in Singapore was 1. One woman put to death for possession. Compare that to the tens of thousands in San Francisco alone and tell me again that prohibition doesn’t work.
Singaporeans do not have the same expectation of freedom that Americans have,
I read Chasing the Scream. Not sure how you get anything from that book that makes you think this article is not relevant and has little if not zero connection to whether or not prohibition works or does not work. This article is merely pointing out how ridiculously our medical establishment failed and created addicts. These people did not become addicts because they sought out drugs for a good time and slipped into addiction. They trusted doctors that told them it was not addictive (and those doctors were told this by pharma). This article points how who is to blame, how it happened and has zero to do with prohibition.
I get your point. The argument is about the approach to drug use, for which the current approach has been a complete failure. Yes, the disgustiing grip big pharma has on medicine is a huge factor. 100 yrs of prohibition has yielded ZERO, so yes it is very relevant. As the book notes, most who use do not become addicts, over 90%, that is not irrelevant. The approach of prohibition and incarceration is a provenly failed approach, why double down?
Exactly!!!!
Why are the American people so addicted. Is it because you lost faith in your own Govt.?
First, I have no faith in government. Second, why is anyone "addicted" to anything? This is not a new problem and certainly is one pertaining to the "government", not some supposed "war" waged for over one hundred years that has been a complete failure. The idea that behavior is controlled by some higher power like "government" is an illusion. Why anyone would have any faith in "government" is a concept beyond defense. When you lose enough you eventually have to tack in a different direction.
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Run!
"I'm with the press. I'm here to tell the truth."
Liar!
Thanks Matt for sharing this very informative article. I've lost a family member (nephew) to an overdose. My daughter is a cop and sees the results of addiction every day on the streets from the homeless to fatal accidents to crime. Driving through town I see people walking like zombies caught up in their addiction. I knew Big Pharma was responsible for a lot of this, but I didn't realize the levels. (However, I think pushing Adderall and Ritalin, etc., on young people should absolutely be discussed in conjunction with the opioid crisis -- I don't think enough people pay attention to that connection. A close family friend was prescribed Ritalin years ago and when he was taken off as a teenager, developed a serious drug and drinking problem. He's clean now and doing great, but it took being arrested and jail time to clean him up.)
My first cousin died from a drug overdose from this stuff. He was the most handsome kid in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, great family, great college fraternity, great athlete, etc. And then he became like a zombie and then over-dosed. I'm sure the vast majority of families can tell similar stories.
Somehow I hope this does become a real political issue. If it does, it should benefit RFK, Jr. immensely. That this hasn't happened already is a "tell" about the powerful forces protecting Big Pharma.
The press coverage of Kennedy’s campaign, which has been slanderous, is very telling. The New York Times keeps talking about some family members who don’t like him—how fascinating!—but never seems to actually discuss or examine any of his positions. Or wonder, gee why has our childhood vaccine schedule tripled since the vaccine companies were given freedom from liability?
“Their under-appreciated rage drove skepticism of official COVID-19 narratives” This is a very important point. Back when people were villainized for not taking the vaccine, nobody ever considered that many were not taking it because they were so recently lied to about opiates (or had a friend or family member affected). Seems obvious the connection that in rural areas you had lower vaccine uptick and higher opiate addiction rates. I wonder why they don’t trust pharma and take the shot! Probably because they know more people that are addicted to opiates than people hospitalized by COVID! Probably because they know way more people that died of opiates than died of COVID! Trusting pharma got family/friends killed when it came to pain treatment, why should they listen to pharma re COVID treatment? Yet the snobs of the world mocked them for “doing their own research “.
It seems to me that the main culprit, and the main reason for the huge jump in overdoses of late, has been the ease of getting Fentanyl. From the graph in the article, it seems that prescription opiate overdose level has held at the same level for 20+ years. It seems that the ire should be directed at China and the cartels
Scapegoating China again.
YOU Americans are so stupid. IF you need painkillers (for over) 6 weeks after an 'op it is because the 'op was not successful.
America has become a spiritually vacuous society (and I’m not talking about the belief in the dogma of a certain religion). C.J. Jung called alcoholism (and any other addiction) spiritus contra spiritum – seeking a false spirit for the genuine spirit. Until Americans wrap their heads around why this is, we will continue adding one more nail in the American coffin.
And, when you look at Alexander Tytler’s Cycle of a Democracy (and yes, we were supposed to be a Constitutional Republic), we are headed for full dependency on the government. And then it’s all over and back to bondage we go. But, the next cycle after bondage is Spirituality, because when you are in prison and want to be free, spirituality – the belief that God exists so anything is possible – including freedom from bondage. Maybe we could choose to skip over dependency and bondage and get back into spirituality?
I like this idea BUT there is NO God.
You can 'scapegoat' everything in the USA but the fact is: YOU are losing your 'world power.'
You can blame everything on any country in the world this does not take away from the fact that you have lived lives of luxury and it is changing.
As Jung once said, "I don't need to Believe in God, I KNOW God exisits." That's a personal thing and maybe a soul level thing.
But, you are absolutely right that America is losing world power and deserves her comeuppance because….We the People (Americans) are the Heirs of the American Experiment and We are Squandering Our American Inheritance!
Liz. I have never really known what the American 'inheritance' means.
Your country was founded on greed. For many years 1/4 of the public didn't even bother to vote. They did not think that the US experiments would ever stop which is why you are now in the mess you are in.
No, we were not founded on greed.
We were founded on principles of individual liberty, recognizing that we were all born with inherent rights. Our Constitution limits the power of government in order to maintain that liberty.
Unfortunately, it's all gone sideways & THAT is because of greed, a greed for wealth & power.
Luxury???!!
Is that like white privilege?
There are more than 300 million people in the US. It isn't really accurate to assert that we (collectively) have lived lives of luxury.