Every day we read about cruelty to children, poor people, refugees, immigrants, you name it.
Now, in the name of Stopping The Opioid Crisis we are forcing people with terrible chronic pain to stop taking their medication, because SOME people abuse drugs including street drugs.
I have lived with a cancer patient, who had terrible chronic pain.
Opioids are absolute life savers for people in such situations. Forcing them to “taper” is brutality.
What is wrong with us? Are we incapable, as a country, of doing anything right anymore? Why do we attack problems that require intelligence and subtlety and compassion with the equivalent of a 2 x 4 or a tank?
Maybe the great American experiment is over. We can’t hold our heads up if we are torturing people — people who are suffering; asylum seekers; prisoners.
Part of our problem is our Puritanical heritage. We HATE the idea of people using drugs, alcohol or anything else that might ease our lot in life, even if that ease might allow us to manage terrible pain that deprives us of the ability to live any kind of a rewarding or even just bearable existence.
Shame on us.
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