…on the Jeep radio and the Internet I’ve already encountered pieces about the “opioid crisis” twice today.
So either we’re being lied to in a really systematic way, or there’s a prescription pill epidemic. After – how long? 50 years? 60? – of the War on People Who Take Drugs, including intimidating and imprisoning doctors to keep them from ‘overprescribing’ the things, somehow everybody in the country but me can pop Vicodin like Pez. Why couldn’t I ever find any of those doctors when I wanted one?
So…either the government’s War has been the biggest failure since Operation Barbarossa or we’re being lied to. Or both. Both is not out of the question.
Who – I really want to know – who came up with “opioid” in the first place? That’s a really annoying word for some reason, probably because it came out of nowhere and was suddenly on every news reader’s lips day and night. What ever happened to old-fashioned opiates?
Having seen far too many of the addicts I’m pretty sure this one isn’t a lie. Mostly bored kids who looked in grandma’s medicine cabinet one day and ended up spending the rest of their life chasing the best possible high. Changing the popular oxycotin 80mgs to “anti abuse” pills about five years ago only spurred a mass switch to heroin.
And just to be the annoying scientist, “opiate” refers to things derived from good, old poppy plants while “opioid” also includes the stuff that’s only ever seen the inside of a lab.
The way it works is that you experiment. If things don’t go well, you OD. This is where things get interesting, especially if you have friends who call the medics for you. When they arrive, they squirt hundreds of dollars worth of Narcan up your nose (at great taxpayer expense) which fixes you right up so that you can go out and OD again.
The next time perhaps the taxpayers get lucky and nobody calls the medics.
The towns around me each routinely see regular OD deaths, and their budgets are being strained by the cost of the Narcan.
I don’t know where this problem came from, and I don’t know how to fix it, but it is very real.
this has been ongoing for decades.
maybe the ‘news’ is full of it to redirect our attention from treason and other government shenanigans?
If you were wondering why the streets are flooded with cheap heroin… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan
There are arguments on both sides of the “is the opioid crisis real”. Both sides claim numbers are on their side. Both sides claim the other is lying.
I can personally tell you that trying to explain to your doctor that you f*cking hurt and is there anything else you can take when you’re having a bad day, is a really bad idea these days unless your doctor knows you really well. Trying to get out from under a “drug seeking behavior” note on your file is a massive PIA. I feel sorry for the folks who have serious chronic pain that can’t be managed, even on a good day, with anti-inflammatories, cause getting a doctor to listen to you is becoming harder and harder.
Meanwhile in Portugal…
https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening#.Ab0aRXvaK