Kind of ironic considering it was about pain management and how horrible they have become. I noticed a couple of things in the comments. (Yes I do read all the comments on my diaries. Even the ones who are not really nice or just trolls.) There is a real anger at the DEA and the "War On Drugs". I wrote a paper for college English just over 20 years ago about the need to legalize all drugs and use the profits to fund addiction recovery centers. Instead of building more and more jails we could have better addiction recovery centers. The best part is no new taxes. These pay for themselves. Even better is the fact that we "WIN" the War on Drugs. No more huge profits for dealers equals no more drug lords. No more corner dealers means the drugs are all the same strength and thus we can cut way back on accidental over doses. I know it's a far out idea. Too bad it also makes complete sense.
So yesterday's diary touched off some latent anger at the DEA. I am pretty angry with them as well as with my state politicians. See these two have banded together and criminalized my pain medications. Doctors are truly afraid of prescribing any narcotic pain medication. Hell I know this from talking to my doctors. My own PCP will not write pain medication scripts for narcotics. She instead refers then to pain management clinics. I tore into the pain clinics yesterday. They really piss me off. They have changed the treatment of pain into a business that does very little to combat the pain and a whole lot to line the doctor's pockets with cash. Today I am teeing off on the DEA and these great state politicians who have stuck their fingers into the practice of medicine and made it extremely hard to get effective treatment.
Jump down past the orange snow doodle before it melts and let me know if I missed anything
So here we are all ready to tee off on those idiots who have meddled in the medical field without having a medical degree. See that is a huge problem. Doctors go to school for quite a while to learn their chosen fields. It is way more than just a few extra biology classes. So when politicians meddle with medical decisions the result is always horrible. Take a look at Jeb Bush and his intervention in the Terry Shaivo case. For a better example let's look at all these wonderful new laws put in place to "combat" pain med addiction.
So many states have stepped up with new laws to combat this. There really is a major epidemic of addiction here in the US. It starts out with the legal use of prescription pain medications. These are highly addictive drugs. Let me say that again These are highly addictive drugs. They are meant to help a person deal with the pain they have from any number of life issues. It could be a car crash or a muscle strain from golfing. It could be an accident at work or a fall from a bike. It could be from cancer, fibromyalgia or degenerative disc disease. There are literally thousands of causes of pain. Now my next sentence will probably be attacked. This whole issue started with doctors prescribing these highly addictive medications for every day pain. The drug companies pushed this practice. Hell why not they want to make money. The more users they have the more money they make. So the drug reps marched into doctors offices across the country and pushed these wonder pills and their fantastic benefits while down playing their addictive nature. They took the doctors out to dinner and left them pens and other swag, all emblazoned with the drug of choice's name on it.
Those poor dumb ass doctors. They believed the hype. After all why would the drug companies lie. So they prescribed hydrocodone for back ache and other every day hurts. The worse the hurt the stronger the drug they prescribed. Soon the drug companies were happy as hell. They had thousands of users across the land. Then the hurt ended but the need for the drug did not. They were hooked. The patients learned to lie to get the drugs they wanted. The doctors were happy to oblige. They wanted to hep their patients. Sounds like a good thing but it wasn't. These poor over educated doctors got conned by phantom pains and wrote the scripts the addicts were demanding. Some wised up but not enough. Meanwhile society stuck it's biases into the mix. See society hates addicts. Doesn't matter what the addiction is to. They hate it and demonize those poor folks who are addicted. It may be subtle or it may be blatant but it is there. I see it every day when people find out I take strong pain medications. I have dealt with it from my own freaking family. Hell my dad is insisting I am addicted to them just because someone he knew had been. This caused those who were addicted to not seek treatment. They didn't want to be demonized by their family and friends. Some kicked their habit on their own. Most could not. They learned to doctor shop, going from doctor to doctor to get their monthly allotment of pills. Their addiction increased and now they needed even more pills and stronger pills.
So what the hell happened to doctors that they fell for all of this. These people are supposed to be so smart. It isn't easy to get through medical school. It takes brains and commitment. It was a combination of things. The old days when doctors knew their patients by name and would make house calls are over and done. Now it is assembly line medicine. You get maybe five or ten minutes with the actual doctor if you see them at all. Most likely you will see a PA or a NP. They see 20 or 30 patients a day if not more. Nurses take the history, vital signs and the rest and leave the patient in an exam room and hopefully the doctor will come in within the hour to see you. They ask you a few questions and you are out the door and they are on to their next patient. They don't have time to talk with their patients. They don't have time to properly diagnosis their patients. They rely on patients to tell them what is happening. Addicts know this and have perfected it. They know what to say to get the drugs they want. The end result is even more addicts in the making as doctors over prescribe narcotics for everyday pain.
It is a shame really that addiction has become such a pariah. Every day people who have had accidents become addicted to their pain relievers. Every day people whose body has started to fail have become addicted to pain medications. The huge and shameful problem is this. Once their pain goes away they are now addicted and their doctors turn them lose. Stop and think f that. once the injury has been healed the doctors turn them loose. They don't offer addiction counseling. That is left up to the patient to find. They don't offer help getting off the drugs they got the patient addicted to. How freaking shameful is that ? Don't they have an obligation to their patients ? Don't they have an obligation to society ? The answer is obviously HELL YES ! Doctors take the Hippocratic oath or a variance upon graduation from medical school and part of it is to do no harm. Leaving a patient to battle addiction on their own is not doing no harm.
So what is the solution to all of this ? The politicians think it is harsher laws to deal with addicts and doctors who write narcotic scripts. The DEA thinks it is raiding doctors offices and reviewing private medical records to find a pattern of script writing. Both are bullshit. Both actually harm patients who need pain medications for daily life. Both do nothing to fight the underlying cause. The addiction to pain medication. They target both the addict and the doctor for criminal prosecution. They enrich the pain clinics by making visits every 30 or 60 days mandatory. They make it mandatory to drug test the patients. They make rules and regulations that put barricades in the way of patient care. Some states make it mandatory to give up your right to medical record privacy to be seen by pain clinics. That is freaking ridiculous.
Something needs to be done. These people need to be treated. Not treated as criminals. My bright idea is that the drug companies that manufacture these medications put up a small percentage of their profits from these drugs to fund addiction treatment centers that patients can be referred to after the treatment of their injury is over. That might work but I am open to other ideas. Something needs to be done and done quickly to stop this epidemic. We don't need more laws we need better treatment and more humane treatment after all we don't want to see granny in jail doing time because she was addicted to pain meds.
Wed Mar 04, 2015 at 2:49 AM PT: Well apparently I have hit the wall with my PM clinic. The nice dragon lady ( yeah that was sarcasm. Where the hell is the sarcasm font when you need it ) Said they will never increase my dose. They are just getting e to 50 then sticking in a pain pump. The nice dragon lady is the wife of the owner and practice manager of the clinic. I heard her tell an admin to dismiss a patient who had refused to let them do a set of shots twice. He left and she said dismiss him now. He refused the shots because they did nothing for his pain. They were going through the list again apparently on him. So bottom line they sent me back to the surgeon. and tried to schedule me for an MRI even though I have 8 metal rods in my back. Kind of makes you wonder.