it hurts

IT HURTS
it hurts
us all
one way or the other

as a family doctor i was always caution about ordering
pain medicine for folks
especially chronically

over my career i worked a lot in the emergency room
you sort of get hard hearted about things
especially folks wanting pain medicines in the middle of
the night

it is hard sometimes to tell the difference between real pain
and addiction
the red flag complaints were migraines toothaches neck pain
and the worst low back pain
now eg with migraines when they are really uncomfortable
their blood pressure is up their heart rate is up
plus they look like they hurt
those things are hard to fake
ive only had a headache like that once
from a flareup of iritis
i would have easily taken a pain shot in the emergency room
to get relief

in the late 90s to early 2000s in texas
there was a push by the state board of medical examiners
to start punishing doctors especially primary care for not
treating patients pain with meds like hydrocodone
many a doctor was reprimanded by the board for not
giving folks pain meds

this made you feel some pressure to ease up your restriction
of pain med prescribing
so even i noticed over time i tended to give folks more pain meds
i became a more liberal prescriber of these narcotics

now enter the drug companies with it oxycodone
a great med taken less often that works good against acute pain

then big pharma the drug companies did all those things they do
to get more people on their drugs
advertise to the public wine and dine doctors

then enter the specialty
pain doctors

now as a practicing doctor i liked pain doctors
so i sent folks to them to get their drugs
they seemed to be free with the use of the drugs
but did require contracts and controls like drug tests

so now folks could easily get the drugs legally they needed
one thing i noticed was that folks with real chronic pain
were able to get their pain controlled

but way back in my brain there was this nagging uneasiness
over all of this
there seemed to be a lot of folks who got hooked that really
didnt need the drugs anymore

if you listed to the addicts it was the system and the docs that hooked
them

since ive retired im amazed at how common it is for folks to freely
take narcotics and how many use them

then came the government again
you know things will get worse when they try to fix things
now a big restriction on how often the drugs can be ordered
only a month at at time
a trip for many to the doctor to get a prescription that could be
called in before or written for several months

so now you have this large group of folks that are hooked on
all this pain meds
thanks to the system doctors pharmacies drug companies
the government
that are now cut off from their supplies

a big vacuum a big void occurred
you can almost hear the sucking sound that is going on


ink magazine

its called heroin
cheap easy to get addictive
life changing
the new white person pain reliever replacing oxycodone and hydrocodone

the new middle class cancer

all created by a system without a brain

the solution
decriminalize all this
make drugs like these opiates legally available
providing safer cheaper sources for these addicts
provide an intensive aggressive treatment centers for them
not new jails for their incarceration

ok we know this probably aint gonna happen
more folks have to die
it will probably take a high ranking politicians child
to die tragically from this disease
to get something done

you know
like when an intersection finally gets a red light
even though everyone who drives the area
police fireman tow truck drivers emts
all
have known for years
the red light was needed

so it is with this problem

most of us know someone a friend a friends child a neighbor
a fellow employee more sadly a loved one
affected by this addiction
and
worse
those who have died from their use

we need a solution
that works

the organicgreen doctor