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A study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) came to the conclusion that non-narcotic pain medications are equivalent to narcotics in control of chronic pain but don't have the side effects of death and severe disability that narcotics do.
This would appear to provide hard data to support the idea that narcotics should not be used to control chronic pain.
First of all, let me point out that they are not talking about acute pain, such as when you roll into the emergency room with a knife wound or a broken bone. Or the pain that you have just after hip surgery. Nobody is suggesting that narcotics should not be used for that kind of pain. We are talking here about pain that goes on for weeks, months, or years. So don't conflate treatment of acute pain with chronic pain.
And we are not talking about severe pain from terminal cancer or other such diseases, in which the debilitating effects of the drug are not an issue.
The problem with chronic use of narcotics is that they lose their effectiveness after a week or two and then they are no better than taking aspirin unless you bump the dose up. Then after two more weeks you have to bump the dose up again. Then again. And pretty soon you're dead with an overdose.
Or maybe you take your usual dose of MS-Contin for the back pain and decide you'd like a slug of Jack to take some of the tenseness out of the day. Bang! you're dead with an overdose due to the combination. Or maybe you combine the morphine you take for fibroids with one of your husband's Valium tablets. Overdose and dead.
And so it goes until tens of thousands of people have died from taking prescription narcotics.
And if you manage not to OD there are still other effects of narcotics that were poorly appreciated until recently, like the way they sap all energy, verve, and ambition out of you until you're nothing more than this layabout blob with no hope of ever accomplishing anything. The deaths are just the tip of the iceberg. Under the water floats the specter of hundreds of thousands of burned out, wasted lives with ruined families and neglected children all due to chronic narcotic use.
This would appear to provide hard data to support the idea that narcotics should not be used to control chronic pain.
First of all, let me point out that they are not talking about acute pain, such as when you roll into the emergency room with a knife wound or a broken bone. Or the pain that you have just after hip surgery. Nobody is suggesting that narcotics should not be used for that kind of pain. We are talking here about pain that goes on for weeks, months, or years. So don't conflate treatment of acute pain with chronic pain.
And we are not talking about severe pain from terminal cancer or other such diseases, in which the debilitating effects of the drug are not an issue.
The problem with chronic use of narcotics is that they lose their effectiveness after a week or two and then they are no better than taking aspirin unless you bump the dose up. Then after two more weeks you have to bump the dose up again. Then again. And pretty soon you're dead with an overdose.
Or maybe you take your usual dose of MS-Contin for the back pain and decide you'd like a slug of Jack to take some of the tenseness out of the day. Bang! you're dead with an overdose due to the combination. Or maybe you combine the morphine you take for fibroids with one of your husband's Valium tablets. Overdose and dead.
And so it goes until tens of thousands of people have died from taking prescription narcotics.
And if you manage not to OD there are still other effects of narcotics that were poorly appreciated until recently, like the way they sap all energy, verve, and ambition out of you until you're nothing more than this layabout blob with no hope of ever accomplishing anything. The deaths are just the tip of the iceberg. Under the water floats the specter of hundreds of thousands of burned out, wasted lives with ruined families and neglected children all due to chronic narcotic use.