INFLAMMATION, CHRONIC PAIN, ADDICTION

Or you could say chronic pain treatment, one of the most etc., etc. image via nevadapain.com

We all have a horse in the chronic pain race.

The best advice after surgery is taking pain pills on a schedule.

If you let the pain get ahead of the pain killer, it’s hard to back down.

Skip a pill and you might take an extra dose, then double up in half the scheduled time.

After that it’s off to the chronic pain races with an opioid addiction as first prize.

You know that guy, or a guy who knows that guy.

If everything works the way it should after a painful experience, and your doc writes you that OxyContin prescription, you need to suck it up and cycle off, gritting through the hard recovery.

At least that’s the idea, fixing the problem before chronic pain sets in, not joining the opioid crisis.

Tell me if this sounds like what you’ve seen:

Someone hurts their foot, ignores it, limps around until they torque the knee on their other leg. So they get off their feet as often as possible.

They gain weight, their body puffs up with inflammation, their foot swells, their knee grows huge.

Then it’s anti-inflammatory drugs, pain killers, and possible surgery on the foot or knee. Probably both.

After more anti-inflammatories, Oxy, and whatever else you have in the box, you’re on your way to a first class addiction.

“Well, let’s just look at OxyContin.

When that came on the market in 1996, sales of the drug were about $50 million. By 2002, sales of this drug were $1.6 billion, and they have continued at that clip ever since, exceeding well over $30 billion in sales. That’s just one drug. So that gives you an idea of the scale here of the amount of money involved.”

How much money did the PBS Newshour say?

The kind that keeps the door open, wide open, for more profits.

Well, they were primarily abusing it in the way they were assuring doctors that these powerful opioids that are a controlled substance would not be addictive in the way that they later proved to be addictive and could be used for things like chronic pain, which we now know they’re not very effective at.

So they were able to broaden the market through a series of misrepresentations and through a series of aggressive marketing tactics.

Don’t think the aggressive marketing tactics included a future with black tar heroin, that’s no selling point, but that’s where the opioid pain killer road leads. Or can lead.

You’re seeing governments, state governments in particular, move to restrict the prescription, primarily in making sure that prescriptions are a limited number of days. Before, they would be 30, 60 days, and there would be plenty of pills left over.

Acute pain needs something to back it down, so rest and healing happen.

Chronic pain needs something to back it down so it won’t ruin the rest of your life.

If you live in pain, you need to adjust. Gobbling down pills, then hitting the needle won’t work long term.

What works for you? I use the gym.