Worth Reading: A Report on Drug Trafficking and Gangs That Terrifies

Douglas Farah ^ | Jan. 21, 2009 | Douglas Farah

[Loud Mime]

Thank You, I should keep the legalization and decriminalization in mind.

I am for the opening up of the drug market. I have problems with headaches that will increase to migranes. I wish I could just buy the medicines that helped me. But I have to go to the doctor for refills, driving up my medical costs and taking good time from my schedule. When I moved I had to reestablish trust, which resulted in great pains for me. Doctors just don’t want to expose themselves to the lawyers and the feds by giving a patient what they ask for.

There’s something terribly wrong with our system.

[SmallGovRepub]

Some doctors are a lot more concerned about turning their patients into drug addicts than they are about the government. I know my dad's that way. He just does not want to give his patients narcotics unless they are dying. He'll tell people to learn to live with their pain. He'll rarely prescribe something that is addictive, because he believes that in most cases his patients’ quality of life will be much lower if they become drug addicts than it would have been if they had to live with some pain. He may take it too far, but I have to say I agree with him on that to a great extent. We still have a lot of doctors who are basically licensed drug dealers. I used to work as a public defender and it got to the point that I knew all the local doctors people went to to get their narcotics. These people knew which doctors would write them scripts for anything they wanted. The word would be out on these guys and my drug addict clients would all be going to the same ones. You wouldn't believe how many people are getting drugs this way and selling them on the streets for several times what they paid for them, often with the government covering most of what they paid to begin with. Some of the saddest cases I would see were cases where people with legitimate health issues would become addicted to pain meds they were prescribed and it would get to the point that they were forging prescriptions, stealing drugs and that sort of thing. These addictions can be incredibly powerful. Good people can become so desperate that they'll do bad things to get their fix, and so many of them just can't quit, even after they get in trouble, get sent to rehab or even prison. I don't want the government keep people from getting the pain meds they need, but there is another side to that coin.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

This is the solution to drug money...

[genetic homophobe]

Your dad is a rare bird, God bless him. Today's medical culture, highly influenced by the pharmaceutical companies, have been taught that nobody should be in pain for any reason, ever. They dole out pain pills like crazy. They totally addicted my wife after her back surgery. She quit one day, cold turkey, and it was terrible. I've never seen anyone so sick. My son just had 4 wisdom teeth pulled. The oral surgeon prescribed him (he just turned 18) a bottle of 25 Perkasets. Unbelievable. He didn't need any of them, he made it fine on advill.

[SmallGovRepub]

I've had oral surgery too and been prescribed narcotic pain meds. That's okay I think, a one time script. Normally though I think they give less than 25. If memory serves me correctly usually in those circumstances I've been given ten pills. I've never taken them all though for one incident. They sit in my medicine cabinet and then someday if I get an abscessed tooth or something I'll take them rather than asking for a new script. Those things usually mess with my stomach. There was once when I took them for a few days and got over the upset stomach and I started to see how people could get addicted. It can feel pretty nice to take those. Usually though people only take them for a short period and quit. The ones who take them for longer periods are the ones most likely to get addicted. The longer people take them, the more likely it is they'll become addicted.

Aside from pain meds anti anxiety meds are prescribed like candy these days, benzodiazepines like Xanax. Those prescription are often refilled with regularity and people do get addicted to those drugs. I'm surprised at how many people are prescribed pain meds and benzodiazepines. They'll have anxiety along with their pain I suppose, and a lot of tense muslces too apparently so they'll get muscle relaxers like Soma along with their hydrocodone or Oxycontin and their Xanax. We have so many people walking around, and driving, drunk as can be on all these meds.

Was your wife going to “pain management” doctors? Often they are the worst about just giving people whatever drugs they want and doing it basically indefinitely.