Why hasnt the opioid epidemic hit other countries?

[stevenleser]

27. You are absolutely right but I am not sure that is within Aristus ability to solve

I have a herniated disc at C6-C7. When it first happened in the summer of 1999 from a sports injury, I was in pain for an entire year and taking 8 percocet a day. Eventually, I got a shot of cortisone and a few days of prescribed bedrest afterwards and I was in no pain. From 2001 to 2014 I would have 1-3 attacks a year lasting from 3-17 days. One of those attacks required another cortisone shot. Some of the time the pain was sufficient where I needed to go back on Percocet for 1-5 days. From 2001-2014 I took an average of around 10 percocet per year.

I havent had an attack since 2014 and a very old bottle of percocet sits in my medicine cabinet 3/4 full since then.

For me, percocet was never addictive, but if I had needed something like that and it wasnt there, it would have been torture. I think now they have better things like the pain patches. Hopefully I will never need those. I also would be willing to try cannabis if it were legal and I had another attack.

All of that is a long winded way of acknowledging that we need an intelligent national effort to figure this out. I don't think it is that complicated. Better guidelines regarding pain medications, addiction care for those who get addicted to pain meds and I think we're 95% there.