I don’t know Illinois narcotic law, but most states allow the surgeon to prescribe a stronger narcotic, like Dilaudid or oxycodone.  There should be a way around it.

Absolutely correct!

When I had shoulder surgery I had a jumbo sized bottle of vicodin with pretty much all you could eat refills.
Think I took 10 of them in total.

Years later I had my wisdom teeth out (all 4 in one sitting, two were impacted, one was infected).

When I was being sent home I asked the oral surgeon if I was going to get anything for the pain.

He looked at me like I was the biggest POS junkie/drug seeker on the face of the earth, waved his hand at me and said "take a few Tylenol if you feel any pain" and walked out of the room.

Spent the next few weeks in quite a bit of pain. Thanks doc.
Do people really get so hard up that they will have 4 of their teeth pulled just to get pills?

ETA: When my mom was on hospice they gave us enough of a pain management "party kit" to kill Keith Richards. When she passed my dad asked the hospice people what he needed to do with the unused pain meds. They nonchalantly told him "oh, those, just throw them out". My dad was so freaked out about having them around he went to the police station and turned them in.

It's what people want.

Try 90 morphine sulphate pills for $3.90.
My wife's script up until recently. She's off of opiates completely now.

The problem is the war on drugs is a failure. The war on poverty is a failure. The war on education a failure. Having a big government agency to solve problems in society with billion of tax dollars is a failure. You are better off letting the free market and Darwin take over

The less than 1% stat is for people without a previous addiction problem. If someone has an addictive type personality, then yes, they will be more likely to abuse a narcotic... This fact should not affect other people.

Thread is dildos

Opioids are the best for of population control we have.

Born with free will, every man has a choice.

Nope.  What your copay is has nothing to do with the problem.  The problem was multlifactorial:

1.  You used to get a prescription for 40 tablets + 5 refills, from 'certain' docs, because you had an ingrown toenail or something.

2.  The .gov got involved and decided pain was an undertreated problem, coincidentally after some good lobbying by the manufacturer of one of the most abused long acting opioids to ever be marketed.

3.  Practitioner reimbursement was then tied to patient satisfaction surveys about the quality of care received.  See #1 and #2, think about that for a bit, and tell us what Ray Charles saw coming.

Thinking back, it might have been two weeks worth at two doses a day. 30 pills. I have no idea what size or anything like that, I never fill those prescriptions when I get them, although I would if I thought I actually needed them.

Taint funny McGee

Opioids are a problem because some people think life can be 100% pain free.

It can't.

The doctors are very reluctant for fear of running afoul of the authorities..

One told me to give her some tough love..

Don't you mean $10 each

I know.  Still don’t know how I didn’t see th car

Ouch!

It just seemed weird that these pain pills were cheaper than most meds.  I can’t even get a bottle of off brand aspirin/Tylenol for that little

How many people were overdosing on OxyContin?

How many overdose on fentanyl?

Not blaming anyone.  Just found it weird my copay was so cheap for them.  My other prescription copays are lot higher.

I blame Obama.

Afghanistan has been at full production for at least a decade.

I will take the auburn haired girl at 2:30 please.

That is where the "opioid crisis" gets weird.

When they are cheap and available, you have issues with addiction.
When they are illegal and hard to get, you have issues with addiction, crime (dealing, violence, theft etc), death and the like.
Not to mention the proceeds from the sales of illicit drugs go to finance gangs and drug cartels.

That said, I am not so sure about the idea of straight up decriminalizing them but at the same time I have read too many stories of normal people with health/pain issues using prescription pain meds turned into strung out heroin junkies when their doctor cuts them off from a supply of legal pharmaceuticals.

Don't throw med out, that's just stupid.

That would make more sense.  I usually have 20 tabs to my patients, but mostly the ice pack & rest to prevent bleeding was most important.  But some docs I know told them to take Tylenol or ibuprofen.  The problem with that plan is if your nuts hurt at 2:00am—you gotta go to the ER.  If the pain was getting worse after 2-3 days—there’s a problem that needs to be evaluated.

Please pardon me—that’s horseshit!  If my wife was in pain from surgery & cancer, I would call both the surgeon AND oncologist & be an advocate for my wife and tell both of them she is undertreated for pain & ask how they want to coordinate her care.

Fuck that! There is absolutely no reason to undertreat post-op pain, especially in a cancer patient.  I have called pharmacists to advocate for my own patients in these cases.  I speak from my own experience as a surgeon.

Get a better surgeon or oncologist and do not tolerate this inappropriate care. Please, for your wife.

It’s a problem because people can’t handle their fucking drugs.

Get it together, folks.

Dont ever change kcolg30.  Dont ever change......

The fifth vital sign.

Adding a subjective vital to the mix was perhaps not a brilliant idea.

You've got that backwards, sir.

Heroin made a comeback, because there was a crack down on pill mills and overprescribing of opioid pills.

The people that got hooked on pharmaceutical grade/pill forms of opiates could no longer get them, so the freelance, street corner pharmacists answered the call with the closest thing they could get to their customers - heroin.

Its a problem because a lot of people think being high is better than everything else.

Even if the stuff was free I think overall addiction rates wouldnt change much and would actually go down a little eventually.

It takes a certain mindset of person to just stay high all the time (no matter the drug) and I believe the cost of the drug is merely an inconvenience, where there’s a will there’s a way.  The addict is still going to get high again as soon as possible.

They go for $1/1mg.

They don't give me or anyone else I know (younger) a god damn thing.

Also, I went through a few bottles of Vicodin when I first really hurt my back.

I don't understand the appeal of being fk'd up all day long and not getting any work done..

Isn't that guy dead?

That’s the purpose of vital signs—they aren’t subjective—and you obviously know that.  I’ve had to have “the talk” with lying drug addicts with 13/10 pain & a pulse of 66.  Last time I explained it’s a felony to lie to a doctor to get narcotics & for shits, I had a police officer stand outside his room to talk about other things.  The patient supposed I was talking to the cop about him—and had a miraculous recovery.

im surpised. docs have gotten very iffy about prescribing vicodin. i used to get a few i took for headaches once  month. after more then 20 years doc would no longer write scripts for them.

but anyway, here's how the whole thing played out (i used to be a pharmacist, family owned stores, i grew up around pharmacists and doctors who would write funky scripts)...

1. patient had some pain. doc or assistant would write script for 30 7.5 mg vicodin.
2. pain persists, patient takes them all, ask for more
3. very quickly vicodin no longer 'work's
4. doc writes script for oxycontin (not assistant, doc, before hydrocodone was class II, assistant could write scripts with docs ok)
5. patient starts out on mild oxycontin and takes it every day. doc sorta doesnt pay attention.
6. patient complains pills no longer work, doc ups strength.
7. patient is now addicted.

.. time passes.. perhaps years....
.. diversion of oxycontin and similar in mega strenghts (say 80 mgs) gets into the party scene, kids take it. some die
.. more time passes... uncle sugar finally realizes that there a massive amounts of prescription pills being diverted with addiction and overdoes and SLAMS ON THE BRAKES.. you cant get nothing anymore unless you have terminal cancer..

8. mexican cartels and chinese clandestine labs fill the void. now you can get what you think is vicodin and its fake vicodin made from fentanyl. folks die (prince for instance).
9. cartels mix fentanyl with heroin, more junkikes od, cops now at risk for getting smidgen of powder on them and the fentanyl getting into their system. a hunk of fentanyl the size of a grain of salt can be fatal to someone who doesnt take opiods..

thats the history of the current opiod problem. and i still to this day, find it hard to believe that docs, writting scirpts for what amounts to 16 percodans in one tablet (80 mg oxycontin) didnt realize that they were making addicts out of their patients. and its really hard to believe the drug manufacturers didnt see the potential for abuse when you could crush and snort an 80 mg tablet to get the full effect.

the insanity (government involvement) always runs at full speed. sometimes forward, sometimes backword but always at one speed. in some ways the opiod problem is like the alcohol prohibition days. folks would get government ethanol with a tad of methanol in it to discourage its use. so what does the government due next? it increases the amount of methanol in government ethanol and now folks die or go blind..

quit running into shit

go fuck yourself...

Boys, it only gets worse...

Why pharmacists are reluctant to fill

Read the last sentence in the seventh paragraph...

We are....And I am doing the best I can...Some things I have done cannot be discussed here...

Aside from the cheapness.

Rating pain level as a vital sign that must be addressed.

Basing hospital reimbursement on how well the patients rate the hospital stay

And our society not willing to handle pain in any sort of way.

They fucked up calling pain "the fifth vital sign".  The opiate crisis is the sequelae.

Lol @ hydrocodone.

Get a real doc and get oxycodone / apap combo.

Hydrocodone... PFFFFT