"Really work" in this case meaning probable addiction and potential death in exchange for a month or two of pain relief. If it "really worked" as advertised (maximum of one dose needed per 12 hours) we wouldn't have this problem at all. OxyContin's much-marketed delayed release mechanism is BS and it's costing thousands of lives and livelihoods.
I had surgery in 2011 and was prescribed OxyContin for post-operative pain.
I was very satisfied with the therapy as I had very little post-operative discomfort.
I took the medicine for several days, the prescription ran out, and I felt no incentive to request a refill nor did I turn to street drugs.
I am truly sorry for people that struggle with addiction. I have family members who struggle with that and I know the devastation that it causes.
However, I do not want the government to eliminate an effective class of medications, either through banning them or through scaring doctors into not using them.
The problem, of course, is the misuse. Either by doctors who misprescribe (chronic pain relief is a common use case for opioids, and probably an exceptionally bad one), patients who misuse or abuse, and marketing companies like Purdue who push for profit.
The question, to me, is this: where do we balance benefits/freedoms from overall harm?
This is also the crux of many issues like alcohol abuse, gun rights, etc. Is it more harmful for the government to intervene than to not attempt to legislate away the source of the problem, at the cost of losing something valued by people in the society?
They haven't completely stopped, but they've scaled back quite a bit. This has created a whole host of new problems. From the article:
> In the past five years, as prescriptions for opioids fell in response to the crisis, Americans didn’t shake the habit or seek rehab; they turned to heroin instead. Four out of five people in the US who try heroin today started with prescription painkillers, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Then street heroin started being secretly cut with the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl.
I appreciate Nan Goldin as an artist but I'm not sure what she can do here, as this is more powerful than even the Sacklers at this point. In a kind of irony, her work was an inspiration for the first wave of heroin chic in the 90's.
Because a lot of people have lives filled with chronic pain:
post-surgical pain, spinal/lower back pain, cancer pain, arthritis pain
neurogenic pain (pain caused by nerve damage), etc.
Many of us knew about the Home Loan Fraud the Prescription Drug Fraud for years before it "exploded" and yet there didn't seem to be anything to do about it.
The media and government proved their incompetence and corruption with the ruined lives of millions.
I'm hopeful that the internet is changing this and the time between new massive scams and their exposure shrinks so that fewer people are hurt. That's the best we can hope for right now.
Nan Goldin to the rescue! Brilliant! The Sacklers fancy themselves as philanthropists for the arts. For an artist to bite the hand that feeds them is usually suicide, but not for Nan. Nan's name is made. And heroin was a constant backdrop. The Sacklers made her whether they wanted her or not.
I don't think it is appropriate to blame doctors in the US for this. She was initially prescribed the drug in Berlin. The article mentions that she was in a high-risk group that should not be prescribed the drug, but it is likely that the European doctor was legitimately unaware of that.
"When, back in New York, doctors refused to supply her any more, she turned to the black market, and to cheaper hard street drugs whenever she ran out of money."
I think this person should take responsibility for her own mistakes, rather than trying to blame them on other people.
I don't think you quite understand how drug addiction works. It's not a simple matter of "take responsibility". Particularly since she didn't set out to be a drug addict - she was prescribed a painkiller, and took it by prescription. That has happened to rather a lot of people.
I hate this response. It's such a classic copout and one that attempts to completely nullify any argument for personal responsibility. We just don't "understand" how drug addiction works. Right.
How have some people come to believe that simply being prescribed these medications and taking them as prescribed STRIPS the patient of mental faculty to notice a problem, and renders them utterly dependent and hopeless? That's just not the case, at all. There's plenty of information available to patients about the risk of dependency and many choose to avoid it because, well, it feels good.
I know some addicts. Those that are clean today are clean because (in addition to many other proactive steps) they recognized that it WAS within their power to stop. They admit and recognized that they ABUSED the medication willingly, and despite sobriety being very difficult, is still a choice they can make.
Well, nobody is arguing addiction completely strips mental agency. However, it’s also absurd assigning all the factors at play here to “self control”. That’s something you tell yourself when you don’t want to think about the problem and what would help people; that something you tell yourself to dismiss peoples suffering.
If you actually have a thought that might help, it will almost certainly have to have some sort of nuanced understanding of how humans interact with drugs. You clearly lack this.
It's not like you can just flip a switch once you realize you have a problem. It's great that your friends were able to break free from their addiction, but there are an infinite amount of factors that can (and do) prevent others from doing so. In many cases, one second of weakness is enough to fall back into addiction after years of sobriety.
Logically, sure, you recognize a problem, and you work hard to get rid of it. And many people are able to do that.
But this wouldn't be a worldwide epidemic if a hard choice were the only thing standing in the way.
Which is exactly what she did. She recognized there is a problem, got help, kicked the habit, and is now committing herself to changing the process that leads to people like her becoming addicted.
You aren't thinking this through at all, even by your own standards.
Purdue misled doctors on the effectiveness of the recommended dosages in a way that essentially maximized the addictiveness of their drug in a clinical setting, globally. Instead of telling doctors to prescribe a more frequent dose, they told them to prescribe a larger dose less often which causes more severe withdrawals and has a higher chance of leading to physiological dependence.
Doctors the world over were legitimately unaware of the risks because the manufacturer misled them.
Drug addiction is so bad because drugs fuck with your priorities at a very basic level. Asking someone to give up a heroin addiction is kind of like asking you to abandon your children. Sure it is physically possible to do it (not even that hard, really!) but if you have kids you know how impossible that would feel.
And when you are off them, you still feel that affinity, just as you would forever miss your kids.
I's more like if when your kids aren't around, you get sick.
And it would be incredibly easy to go get your kids back. Like maybe they're just at their grandma's house or something, idk the analogy gets kinda weird.
So you get sick, and not just "feeling a bit green," but fetal position, rocking back and forth, vomiting, runny nose, achy muscle sick. You'll grind your teeth and it's all you can think about, followed by weeks of insomnia.
And after the initial WDing, starts Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome, 6 months to 2 years of feeling shitty (depression, insomnia, mania, restless legs, cravings). And the worst part is a simple phone call and a 20 minute drive could make everything better...at least for a little while.
I find this a remarkably accurate description of addiction/withdrawal.
“Take reaponsibility” does absolutely nothing to help, except maybe satisfy the commenter’s obvious need to feel better-than.
A lot of people are born into families of addicts, myself included, and although the substance may change, it really isn’t our fault at all that they we are addicts.
For most people it takes a big, dedicated support team of other people to get clean. “taking responsibility” is a good start, but it really isn’t enough.
There was a great "external observer" type account in a BBC article [0] a short while back. Granted it wasn't fully impartial, given the author is the mother and addict her daughter, but I believe the account to be rather telling and honest none the less.
This is turning into another moral panic; yet another iteration of the never ending war on drugs. We keep doing this: from prohibition of alcohol to banning pot and psychedelics. It doesn't work.
Opioids are incredibly useful. Vilifying people for providing a pain-relieving medication because they are sometimes misused is disgraceful.
What about the hundreds of millions car companies invest in safety features now? Would they not care about it and the endless industry safety reviews ratings had we not had seat belts pushed onto every car company in the 70s? Private companies invented the seat belt in the late 40s without any regulation asking them too. There is a strong demand for safety features both by pure sales demand and liability by the courts.
The revelation back then was exactly how dangerous cars were and the importance of safety practices. And it's good it was formalized in things like driver training courses and licensing which verifies people understand that before entering a vehicle. As well as advertising campaigns and other efforts to push the idea.
I've used Oxycontin before. I used it for one week, as prescribed, and it helped me recover from a painful medical issue. I'm grateful it was available to me.
For the photographer profiled in this piece to take zero responsibility for her predicament, particularly since she's struggled with opiod and other types of addiction currently and in the past, is absurd.
She's in effect saying, "I abused this drug, so other people should be barred from using it." I reject that full stop. Some people abuse alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, etc., but that doesn't mean that it should be banned.
The profiled photographer does not call for a ban on OxyContin, she argues that they require much more regulation than they currently have. I don't see how the fact that you are apparently one of the many people who don't get easily addicted, and she is one of the many who do, gives you the authority to say that she took "zero responsibility. Not sure what relevance alcohol and tobacco have in this. In America, both substances are heavily relugated, and these regulations were ostensibly in response to fears about their threat to health.
However: I think there was a bit of deceit in the initial marketing push by the drug manufacturers which indicated "not addictive" when this was known to be false, so over-perscribed.
As with the rest of the Drug War the only losers are the hard working taxpayers, and the elderly or disabled who depend on the drug for pain relief via government support. It is doing nothing to stop the flow of drugs, fentanyl is flowing into the streets from China now, in addition to the existing infrastructure bringing in black tar from South America and heroin from the Golden Triangle in Asia.
While the pharmaceutical companies deserve penalties, it's ridiculous that someone with a pre-existing Valium addiction and a history of "hard drug" addiction is blaming the pharmaceutical companies.
42 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 87.5 ms ] threadAnd if you have an issue with the 12 hour dosing of Oxycontin, take it up with the FDA. They approved it.
I was very satisfied with the therapy as I had very little post-operative discomfort.
I took the medicine for several days, the prescription ran out, and I felt no incentive to request a refill nor did I turn to street drugs.
I am truly sorry for people that struggle with addiction. I have family members who struggle with that and I know the devastation that it causes.
However, I do not want the government to eliminate an effective class of medications, either through banning them or through scaring doctors into not using them.
The question, to me, is this: where do we balance benefits/freedoms from overall harm?
This is also the crux of many issues like alcohol abuse, gun rights, etc. Is it more harmful for the government to intervene than to not attempt to legislate away the source of the problem, at the cost of losing something valued by people in the society?
> In the past five years, as prescriptions for opioids fell in response to the crisis, Americans didn’t shake the habit or seek rehab; they turned to heroin instead. Four out of five people in the US who try heroin today started with prescription painkillers, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Then street heroin started being secretly cut with the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl.
I appreciate Nan Goldin as an artist but I'm not sure what she can do here, as this is more powerful than even the Sacklers at this point. In a kind of irony, her work was an inspiration for the first wave of heroin chic in the 90's.
The media and government proved their incompetence and corruption with the ruined lives of millions.
I'm hopeful that the internet is changing this and the time between new massive scams and their exposure shrinks so that fewer people are hurt. That's the best we can hope for right now.
"When, back in New York, doctors refused to supply her any more, she turned to the black market, and to cheaper hard street drugs whenever she ran out of money."
I think this person should take responsibility for her own mistakes, rather than trying to blame them on other people.
How have some people come to believe that simply being prescribed these medications and taking them as prescribed STRIPS the patient of mental faculty to notice a problem, and renders them utterly dependent and hopeless? That's just not the case, at all. There's plenty of information available to patients about the risk of dependency and many choose to avoid it because, well, it feels good.
I know some addicts. Those that are clean today are clean because (in addition to many other proactive steps) they recognized that it WAS within their power to stop. They admit and recognized that they ABUSED the medication willingly, and despite sobriety being very difficult, is still a choice they can make.
If you actually have a thought that might help, it will almost certainly have to have some sort of nuanced understanding of how humans interact with drugs. You clearly lack this.
How do you feel about climate change?
Logically, sure, you recognize a problem, and you work hard to get rid of it. And many people are able to do that.
But this wouldn't be a worldwide epidemic if a hard choice were the only thing standing in the way.
You aren't thinking this through at all, even by your own standards.
Doctors the world over were legitimately unaware of the risks because the manufacturer misled them.
And when you are off them, you still feel that affinity, just as you would forever miss your kids.
I's more like if when your kids aren't around, you get sick.
And it would be incredibly easy to go get your kids back. Like maybe they're just at their grandma's house or something, idk the analogy gets kinda weird.
So you get sick, and not just "feeling a bit green," but fetal position, rocking back and forth, vomiting, runny nose, achy muscle sick. You'll grind your teeth and it's all you can think about, followed by weeks of insomnia.
And after the initial WDing, starts Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome, 6 months to 2 years of feeling shitty (depression, insomnia, mania, restless legs, cravings). And the worst part is a simple phone call and a 20 minute drive could make everything better...at least for a little while.
“Take reaponsibility” does absolutely nothing to help, except maybe satisfy the commenter’s obvious need to feel better-than.
A lot of people are born into families of addicts, myself included, and although the substance may change, it really isn’t our fault at all that they we are addicts.
For most people it takes a big, dedicated support team of other people to get clean. “taking responsibility” is a good start, but it really isn’t enough.
[0]: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39212295
https://forward.com/fast-forward/385375/the-jewish-family-ma...
This is turning into another moral panic; yet another iteration of the never ending war on drugs. We keep doing this: from prohibition of alcohol to banning pot and psychedelics. It doesn't work.
Opioids are incredibly useful. Vilifying people for providing a pain-relieving medication because they are sometimes misused is disgraceful.
The revelation back then was exactly how dangerous cars were and the importance of safety practices. And it's good it was formalized in things like driver training courses and licensing which verifies people understand that before entering a vehicle. As well as advertising campaigns and other efforts to push the idea.
I've used Oxycontin before. I used it for one week, as prescribed, and it helped me recover from a painful medical issue. I'm grateful it was available to me.
For the photographer profiled in this piece to take zero responsibility for her predicament, particularly since she's struggled with opiod and other types of addiction currently and in the past, is absurd.
She's in effect saying, "I abused this drug, so other people should be barred from using it." I reject that full stop. Some people abuse alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, etc., but that doesn't mean that it should be banned.
However: I think there was a bit of deceit in the initial marketing push by the drug manufacturers which indicated "not addictive" when this was known to be false, so over-perscribed.
Nan, admit it, you like getting high.