Your use of opiates/opioids in the US is still crazy in comparison to the rest of the world even after recent restrictions/ controls of this class of medications. I can't believe that you got a shot of Hydromorphone for a brutal headache. Here they would probably only give it if you had a missing limb
This all has to do with economics and other factors -- that the United States consumes a huge percentage of the narcotics and chronic pain people and patients there cannot be medicated properly only means that the worldwide production is way too low and it is especially bad in developing countries. Which is why I have said for a long time that the International Narcotics Control Board, -- which has alleviating those shortages and any scientific ignorance that may be causing the shortages as one of their mandates -- should purchase the Afghan opium crop every year and use it to combat pain everywhere, and pointedly ignore and counter American propaganda about this.
I know a lady who has very bad migraine headaches which became manageable with pre-loaded syringes of pethidine and morphine cubes along with caffeine tablets, aspirin, and paracetamol, ergotamine, bromocriptine, and pergolide. After a projectile vomiting session related to this, her doctors tried dronabinol but the effect was not good, so they, after adding several layers of plausible deniability, the doctors pointed her to the underground freelance pharmaceutical salespeople who provided weed that she turned into tinctures and smoked and vapourised cannabis, which worked well, and she was also turned on to psilocybin mushrooms as a more direct means of affecting the headaches via the CNS.
Hydromorphone and oxymorphone injection, available in the United States as Dilaudid HP and Numorphan respectively, are also what is called for in cases of injury from a foreign object in the eye, being struck by lightning, phantom limb pain, and animal bites. When I was working there right after university, I could sometimes develop intractable nausea and vomiting from the MS-Contin and the immediate-release morphine oral to fine-tune the dose and therefore could not keep my dose, for a long time I was able to go to the doctor and be given a shot of hydromorphone mixed with hydroxyzine or cyclizine whilst I dissolved ondansetron tablets under my tongue, then a few minutes later shots of promethazine and other anti-emetics if needed. The fourth time I had to go to the Emergency Department for vomiting like this, the doctor wrote a prescription for 12 Dilaudid ampoules and my GP added oral/sublingual and injectable hydromorphone in place of the immediate release morphine tablets. Endo may have changed the name of oxymorphone to Opana Injection. One thing that many years ago caused a very serindipitous discovery -- in various European and Asian markets, a product called Numorphan Oral is actually hydromorphinol, a very close relative of hydromorphone and oxymorphone which has an even stronger bang as the speed of molecules sticking to receptors. The three drugs are so similar that they all cause presumptive positives for oxycodone in drug screening test.
Why do human rights groups not include undertreatment of pain and harassment of doctors in ratings of freedom for countries, or have some started to do so?