The demonization of opiates is hurting people.

[LeftyMom]

14. I've posted this before, but a family friend was undermedicated while dying of cancer.

The fear was that she'd become dependent. She was, as I said, dying. She had two entirely separate cancers, and the least dangerous one had a 50% five year survival rate. The other, if I recall correctly, was 5%. There was no question that she was going to be alive long enough for dependence to become an issue: she absolutely wasn't. She was in terrible pain. Finally she tried to kill herself to escape the pain by overdosing on the weak ass pain pills she was getting. She survived. They cut her dosages back still further because she was a suicide risk.

The same doctors refused to arrange for her to have a wheelchair and insisted that she needed physical therapy to strengthen her legs. So she spent her dying months at home and in great pain. They finally authorized a wheelchair about two weeks before she died, but by then she was too sick to go anywhere.

It was the most inhumane thing I've ever seen. I wouldn't treat a sick dog that way.