The CDC can suck my ass
For friends not in the spoonie community, this is about the CDC’s recent guidelines that attempt to combat drug addiction in America by severely restricting access to opioid medications for ALL patients except for terminal cancer patients.
Without opioid pain medications, I would have had to quit working and go on disability nine years before I did.
Without opioid pain medications I would have been housebound and dependent on caregivers for another 10 years after that.
Without opioid pain medications I will be less active, more sedentary, and more sick.
The CDC says opioids don’t work for chronic pain; they’re wrong. They don’t work for some chronic pain. They don’t cure chronic pain. But they make life liveable for millions of chronic pain patients. Estimates of chronic pain sufferers in America range from a low of 39 million to a high of 110 million. That low-water mark excluded people with intermittent chronic pain, like endometriosis or migraine, as well as omitting people with neurogenic pain. Most reasonable guesses put the number at 70–80 million.
The cure for drug abuse and addiction has nothing to do with restricting pain patients’ access to medication, or forcing them to give up what quality of life they have managed to attain through having their pain managed with medication.
It’s not about labeling pain patients as addicts for taking medication to which they can build a physical dependence. (By that definition, every time I go on prednisone and have to taper off it, I’m a prednisone addict!)
It’s not about calling a patient in chronic pain asking their doctor for relief a drug-seeker.
The cure lies in combating the issues that lead to drug abuse, like poverty and an economy that sees the rich getting richer while the poor and middle class fall further and further behind. It lies in giving hope to people in hopeless situations. Not taking hope away from several million more.
Its so fucking obvious why they do it, though. When you’re in chronic pain with no relief the suicide rate goes up, health goes down. They’re trying to kill off disabled people. And its working.
^^^^^
I agree with the above wholeheartedly. However, I was someone who was almost thoughtlessly prescribed percocet PRN for my occasional gallbladder attacks. (I guess that would be intermittent chronic pain?) The emergency room docs were more than happy to keep writing scripts for it for me.
2 years later, I had addiction issues.
I was in the hospital after that for something unrelated about 6 months into being clean. They kept offering me percocet! I tried to have them put in my chart that I’m an addict and I have issues with percocet. Either they didn’t or they didn’t care or whatever. (I’m lucky I was strong enough to say no, and that’s HARD when you’re in pain, and when you WANT it.) (BTW, if any of you know the “magic words” to say so that this wouldn’t happen again in the hospital, please, let me know.)
I’m now 2 years clean. (And, btw, writing this is making me crave.)
I think one of the solutions is MORE RESEARCH INTO PAIN MEDS. More pain meds, better pain meds. Because the options seem to be: tylenol, ibuprofen, and then the next jump is opiates. There needs to be things in between. (Also, things for those of us who can’t do opiates anymore, when ibuprofen isn’t working anymore.)
Also, they really do seem to give out percs like candy if you have a condition. A little more mindfulness around this might be good.
I am HARDCORE about not making life any harder for folks with chronic pain issues/management. (Fuck the CDC indeed!) I have folks in my life who are in chronic pain management programs, and I have read the details of those programs and they’re FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE enough as it is. (You wouldn’t believe the bullshit they go through, and the zero tolerance crap they have to put up with.)
But something does need to be done about the cavalier prescribing of low-end opiates in the ER for PRN pain issues. (And it’s not “accusing the people with chronic pain of being drug seeking.” I was accused as drug seeking & addicted once by a doctor because I didn’t want him taking me off of my Adderall. You know, the drug that allows me to actually FUNCTION in my life. He viewed my needing it to do anything as proof that I was hooked. Someone depends on a medication to do something for them, and then you accuse them of being addicted to it. Are you addicted to your glasses, doc? Because by your theory, if you need something to do something (like glasses to see), then you’re hooked and we need to remove it from you. So yeah, I get it. I really do.)
And I do think the solution is more and better pain meds at various levels. And, you know, more research into pain in general, because we still don’t actually know that much about pain.
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Mooncustafer 