getting a little tired of the crack/meth heads

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

I had surgery for an umbilical hernia two years ago - they gave me a prescription for 12 Percocet. Now, I’m not saying the next 48 hours were the best days ever, but at no point was the pain anywhere near enough to warrant pharmaceutical grade heroin.

Maybe, MAYBE I could have justified two. Take one on the first day because it really wasn’t the most pleasant feeling, and maybe one the next day.

Take a shot of whisky. Smoke a joint. Have an Advil. Or just don’t be a ##### for 24 hours.

Don’t take the heroin.

I left the scrip in the doctors office - never occurred to me to get it filled.

TLDR; opioid overprescribing is a very real problem that doctors need to take responsibility for.

It is very important to manage pain effectively after a surgery

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5626380/

Postoperative pain is not adequately managed in greater than 80% of patients in the US, although rates vary depending on such factors as type of surgery performed, analgesic/anesthetic intervention used, and time elapsed after surgery. Poorly controlled acute postoperative pain is associated with increased morbidity, functional and quality-of-life impairment, delayed recovery time, prolonged duration of opioid use, and higher health-care costs. In addition, the presence and intensity of acute pain during or after surgery is predictive of the development of chronic pain. More effective analgesic/anesthetic measures in the perioperative period are needed to prevent the progression to persistent pain.

Failing to manage the pain effectively from the start makes it much harder to get things back on track.

But hey, good for you that your own cocktail of substances at home worked for you in your particular situation. Be sure to fire your findings off to the Mayo clinic.

[habernac]

I didn’t take my pain meds, either. My brain was in a fog, so I stopped after a day.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by cam_calderon

So, what actually drives people to do drugs, then?

A benefit of the public health intervention model is that it helps give us nuanced answers to these questions that can inform future strategies.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Not sure we can blame the drugs themselves, or the human condition. Addictive drugs are available all over the world. And yet some societies have much worse problems with addiction than others. There’s clearly a cultural element at work.

Japan and S Korea are prosperous, first-world countries. They have social issues, but nothing like our levels of addiction and homelessness. Something in their societies make people less vulnerable to abandoning family, jobs, etc in pursuit of drugs to the point of self-destruction. I’d suggest it’s their conformist, more family-centered and authoritarian culture. There are simply more people in those cultures monitoring and intervening in the behaviour of family members than in far more individualistic North American society.

Vices are often the flip-side of virtues. In the individualistic West, people are free to chart their own course. Defy their family, traditions, institutions to do as they please. That autonomy is a good thing for most of us. But for those who are vulnerable to addiction and mental illness, it means they can pull away from all of their social support to indulge their most self-destructive impulses to an extent that their counterparts in other societies simply don’t have the freedom to.

There is certainly a cultural element. However, I am hesitant to agree that S Korea and Japan do not have self harm issues. Their rate of suicide is greater than Canada.

South Korea has some of the highest rates of suicide in the world.

https://ourworldindata.org/suicide

[jayswin]

Yep, there is an element of "Step in line and succeed or step off a bridge" in some cultures.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

It is very important to manage pain effectively after a surgery

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5626380/



Failing to manage the pain effectively from the start makes it much harder to get things back on track.

But hey, good for you that your own cocktail of substances at home worked for you in your particular situation. Be sure to fire your findings off to the Mayo clinic.

My “cocktail” wasn’t even everything I listed.

It was Advil.

And full disclosure - I’m not tough. I don’t like pain. I actively avoid it. For the sake of this discussion, I’d go so far as to call myself a bitch.

And I didn’t need 12 goddamn Percocet - a 45 minute abdominal surgery doesn’t require enough heroin to definitively rank the entire Pink Floyd discography.

My doctors mentioned on three separate occasions that they, as a private clinic, were superior and more efficient than public health care.

They spent maybe 30 seconds on the Percocet, and almost none of those on the capacity of Percocet to ruin my life.

No reasonable person would suggest not giving pain medication to the people who need it.

But why do people need to start off on mega-opiates when they could start with some THC/CBD gummies with Tylenol, and spend a day or two figuring out if what they needed was a distraction or HEROIN.

What’s the worst that can happen? You’re uncomfortable for an extra couple days.

Upshot is, you don’t die of a fentanyl overdose.

That graph on the previous page clearly demonstrates an overprescribing problem, because there’s simply no way EVERYONE who gets opiates needs them.

Send that to the Mayo clinic for me.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

My “cocktail” wasn’t even everything I listed.

It was Advil.

And full disclosure - I’m not tough. I don’t like pain. I actively avoid it. For the sake of this discussion, I’d go so far as to call myself a bitch.

And I didn’t need 12 goddamn Percocet - a 45 minute abdominal surgery doesn’t require enough heroin to definitively rank the entire Pink Floyd discography.

My doctors mentioned on three separate occasions that they, as a private clinic, were superior and more efficient than public health care.

They spent maybe 30 seconds on the Percocet, and almost none of those on the capacity of Percocet to ruin my life.

No reasonable person would suggest not giving pain medication to the people who need it.

But why do people need to start off on mega-opiates when they could start with some THC/CBD gummies with Tylenol, and spend a day or two figuring out if what they needed was a distraction or HEROIN.

What’s the worst that can happen? You’re uncomfortable for an extra couple days.

Upshot is, you don’t die of a fentanyl overdose.

That graph on the previous page clearly demonstrates an overprescribing problem, because there’s simply no way EVERYONE who gets opiates needs them.

Send that to the Mayo clinic for me.

Yeah, it seems to me as though it would make more sense to start lower rather than hauling out the big guns immediately.

It just seems like the line the line of thinking operates "well this lower painkiller 'might' work but I know this one 'will' work even if its overkill, and I dont want to see this guy again so...."

[Locke]

Another thought, albeit this is largely in Canada, but if you're given a lower-dose painkiller could the Doctors be hesitant to do that because if it is insufficient it could be a while before you could get in to see a Doctor and get something stronger?

I remember my dad after heart surgery and on his pain meds he was a complete zombie and it took forever to get in to see a Doctor to figure out a solution.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

My “cocktail” wasn’t even everything I listed.

It was Advil.

And full disclosure - I’m not tough. I don’t like pain. I actively avoid it. For the sake of this discussion, I’d go so far as to call myself a bitch.

And I didn’t need 12 goddamn Percocet - a 45 minute abdominal surgery doesn’t require enough heroin to definitively rank the entire Pink Floyd discography.

My doctors mentioned on three separate occasions that they, as a private clinic, were superior and more efficient than public health care.

They spent maybe 30 seconds on the Percocet, and almost none of those on the capacity of Percocet to ruin my life.

No reasonable person would suggest not giving pain medication to the people who need it.

But why do people need to start off on mega-opiates when they could start with some THC/CBD gummies with Tylenol, and spend a day or two figuring out if what they needed was a distraction or HEROIN.

What’s the worst that can happen? You’re uncomfortable for an extra couple days.

Upshot is, you don’t die of a fentanyl overdose.

That graph on the previous page clearly demonstrates an overprescribing problem, because there’s simply no way EVERYONE who gets opiates needs them.

Send that to the Mayo clinic for me.

You’re being a bit dramatic and some of what you’re posting just seem… generally uneducated?

For one, percocet isn’t heroin, they aren’t the same thing, they are similar in the way any opioid is similar and if you took your percocet you would not be in danger of enjoying Pink Floyd any more or any less.

Two, 12 percocet isn’t going to ruin your life. That’s absurd. Do you honestly think a doctor should sit down and say “well, another side effect is that if I keep prescribing these for long enough, eventually you might get addicted, and maybe instead of dealing with withdrawal symptoms you’ll throw your life away for the next fix, who knows!” Come on, man.

Three, suggesting alcohol which is a terrible choice post-surgery or CBD which is little more than naturopathic nonsense (and even THC, which is readily available for anyone and could absolutely act as an introduction to a drug dependency people did not previously have due to ease of access, even if less harmful).

Your situation was not one of over-prescribing opioids, nor were any of your alternative suggestions at all realistic.

[Sliver]

Yeah, that post was really dumb. Plus, THC sucks for pain, and I say that as a daily user. If I'm in a ton of pain the last thing I want is to get high and then focus/amplify any ailment to the point where I can feel my heartbeat in whatever is hurting me.

Opiates are amazing, just don't be a tit with them. I was prescribed them when I had my wisdom teeth out, when I got crazy glue in my eye and I was on morphine when I lacerated my spleen. Didn't ruin my life. Took the prescribed amount to get through the worst of things then carried on like normal.

[opendoor]

Sure, but doesn't anyone wonder why in North America we need to prescribe 5-10 doses of strong opiates for every 1 dose they prescribe in places like the UK, France, Finland, South Korea, Portugal, Japan, etc.? I don't think those places just have people writhing in pain unnecessarily.

[mikephoen]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yeah, that post was really dumb. Plus, THC sucks for pain, and I say that as a daily user. If I'm in a ton of pain the last thing I want is to get high and then focus/amplify any ailment to the point where I can feel my heartbeat in whatever is hurting me.

Opiates are amazing, just don't be a tit with them. I was prescribed them when I had my wisdom teeth out, when I got crazy glue in my eye and I was on morphine when I lacerated my spleen. Didn't ruin my life. Took the prescribed amount to get through the worst of things then carried on like normal.

I've got to hear the stories around the bolded parts above...

[stampsx2]

Couple months ago i saw an innocent person at the side of their building in the beltline grt assaulted. When the police came they said the person who did the assaulting was on fentynal and pain killers. Ten years ago it wasn’t like this downtown. Now i see it all the time. I’ve completely stopped taking the c-train cause i want to get a ride and not have to worry about public safety every time i get on.

Anyone else walk a block further when they see a guy screaming obscenities while kicking the #%+* out of a bus shelter?

Sorry, i’ve had enough of this. Just trying to get to work and come home to watch the game.

Whatever we’re doing now certainly isn’t working. It’s getting worse. We should just go back to whatever we were doing ten years ago.

[Matata]

Big pharma has spent decades cooking the books when it comes to opiods and pain relief. The published data is dangerously unreliable. "nobody should suffer needlessly" has been the battle-cry of the drivers of the epidemic.

[blankall]

Off topic, but I tried using CBD to treat a minor back injury from the gym. It did nothing at all. The guy who sold it to me gave me a speech about it being powerful stuff and to avoid taking too much, maybe start with a half a pill. I ended up taking the whole bottle of six and out did nothing at all.

THC, on the other hand, hits me like a truck. Although I can build a tolerance very quickly, and it's much more enjoyable and less of a hell ride when a tolerance has been built.

[Harry Lime]

It's past post 1095, so I'm not going to go back and check, but I'll toss in my 2 cents. I work with someone who recently left their job downtown because they couldn't handle the c-train anymore, and have discussions with other people on their experiences.

If you are looking for a reason why things have gotten so bad and dangerous lately, or why other countries have this issue to a lesser degree; I think that I'd chalk it up to the wealth gap. It is getting much easier to get caught in debt and surprisingly quickly lose your job, home or family. Entire support systems can disappear. Despair is real, and drugs are an escape.

Who is responsible? The simple answer is every level of government touching the affected area. You can make arguments for all sorts of causes and solutions, but at its core the ones most capable of effecting change is gondak, kenneysmith, and Trudeau. Catering to the wealthy will give you a side effect of meth heads and the disenfranchised.

[Jason14h]

The government is to blame for the crackheads ? Seriously the wealth gap has nothing to do with it .

Whether the ultra wealthy have 1 million , 10 million or 100 millions makes zero difference to a crackhead stabbing people of the LRT

There are more support systems available then in anytime in human history for addicts in Canada

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

The government is to blame for the crackheads ? Seriously the wealth gap has nothing to do with it .

Whether the ultra wealthy have 1 million , 10 million or 100 millions makes zero difference to a crackhead stabbing people of the LRT

There are more support systems available then in anytime in human history for addicts in Canada

I think the point is people on the bottom have less and their are more and more everyday.

IMO it's not wealth gap, it's issues like the housing shortage that leave some people with nothing.

[Jason14h]

I can “almost” guarantee the housing shortage has zero affect (effect?) on the LRT “crackheads”

With respect , some of you are delusional

[Harry Lime]

I apologize for using the term wealth gap. Please insert reputable term that indicates when people are left without hope they will fall into drugs and violence. I define meeting the lowest rung of Maslows heiarchy of needs as the responsibility of government.