FDA Recommends Tightening Access To Hydrocodone Pain-Killers

[hunter]

42. ***FUCK THAT***

Chronic pain patients and their doctors already have to jump through too many hoops. Patients are often prescribed expensive alternative pain medicines that damage their bodies further. Mixing acetaminophen with hydrocodone is another atrocity. (Let's poison addicts! Great idea!)

Addiction is a public health problem like cigarettes, alcohol, or anything else. and it should be treated as such. Any addict ought to be able to walk into a pleasant easily accessible free clinic and get help. Medical professionals ought to be able to refer drug seeking patients to such a place

Most people are not going to become addicted to opiates or anything else. Most of all any chronic pain patient who regularly takes opiates IS NOT AN ADDICT and should never be treated as such.

I take NSAIDS on-and-off for joint pain, usually until they mess with my stomach. And then I simply hurt. I don't enjoy opiates because they make me feel yucky; that opiate "buzz" just isn't that attractive to me. Perhaps it's because opiates don't play well with my other meds, or more simply, maybe I don't have the brain chemistry that causes some people to become addicted to opiates. In the same way not everyone who drinks becomes an alcoholic. From what I observe, cigarettes seem to be more addictive than most drugs and they are very damaging to one's health, certainly worse than reasonable doses of opiates for pain management.

If I ever hurt much worse than I do now, then why shouldn't I be allowed to use opiates? There are many people who do hurt worse. They shouldn't have to deal with these crappy authoritarian puritanical responses to something that is merely a public health problem.

This damned "Drug War," labeling certain sorts of addictions or simple drug use as criminal (while allowing others as ordinary commerce...) is the CAUSE of most of our society's drug problem, and not any kind of solution.