The 60 Minutes piece on opioids was an eye opener for me

[Ms. Toad]

20. They should be made available to everyone post-surgery, by default.

I had surgery to remove a bone - pretty painful surgery. The anesthesiologist screwed up and had to use narcan on me, which wiped out the narcotic relief from fentanyl that should have carried me through the recovery room until I hit my room. (I have confirmed with the hospital that it was a screw-up).

Because of other crazy policies, I was not given pain relief in the recovery room (they wanted me alert when I was being transported) - so I was at least an hour without narcotics in my system before they rolled me through the halls, shooting pain spikes at every seam in the uneven floors. When I arrived in my room, they asked me to grab the rails and pull myself over from the cart to the bed - using the side from which the bone had just been removed. Movement was excruiating at that point. I asked them to let me slowly figure out how to move and they grabbed the sheets, folded me in on myself in the sheets, folding freshly cut flesh against the rough edges of bone remnant.

It was at least two hours after that before they got the orders for pain meds on the floor.

So yes, opioids should be immediately available by default post-surgery. It is far better to have them, than to be in the situation I was in when I needed them and they were unavailable for at least 3 hours.

And if you are under the illusion that you will become an addict by using narcotics in the immediate post-surgery pain, they should educate you enough to ensure that you are not choosing to endure pain (which is not healthy for healing) because irrational fear of opioids has convinced you that it is safer to endure pain than to take opioids to address accute pain. If you really have a clear and realistic understanding and then decline, that should be respected. But the default should be narcotic pain relief.

I'm not saying there are no dangers, but - absent some special circumstances you have not disclosed - your reaction to the thought of using narcotics is way out of proportion to any risk related to proper post-surgical use for pain relief.