• DPMC Moderators: thegreenhand | tryptakid
  • Drug Policy & Media Coverage Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Drug Busts Megathread Video Megathread

LA Times: Doctors are top source of prescription drugs for chronic abusers

According to Dr. Mercola, on his website, which is the most visited natural health site in the world, around 70% of patients who ask their doctor for a certain prescription drug are provided with a prescription for it.
 
neversickanymore said:
I'm no big fan of reverse evolution either. On the other hand how much does addiction and overdose have to do with intelligence as a whole?
Click to expand...

Intelligence has almost everything to do with an overdose. Addiction and intelligence that is a common heated debate between me and some of my psychology classmates.

In my honest opinion, if you don't have enough whits about you to know when you are pushing the envelope of a life threatening situation that is completely at your hand then you obviously aren't the brightest in the bunch. I know addiction, I know it extremely well and how much of a hold it puts on someone. "Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with with your self esteem." -Kurt Cobain. If one doesn't have enough brain power to summon the common sense and courage to stop life threating use of drugs, (not a believer of the argument that its a disease and part of our genes) then either ones apathy or ignorance is the reason they lack crucial intelligence.
 
23536 said:
My point of view on this may not be the majority point of view, or even the most responsible one, but it's based on the notion that personal freedom is supreme.

What I'm saying is, remove the prescription requirement, and relegate the doctor to the status of a consultant with absolutely no legal power. If I'm not mistaken, that's how it used to be before this war on drugs business came about.

Teach harm reduction in the public schools, and limit access to substances to those who are above an agreed-upon age of responsibility.

Our ancestors had even less restriction than this, and the human race thrived regardless.

Plus, unless some new information has emerged, there's no proof that increasing access increases fatal overdoses.
Click to expand...
The only legal power a doctor has, above what anyone else has, is doctor-client privilege. They have a license and a bunch of rules to follow established by medical societies.

Proof increasing access increases fatal overdoses. What does this statement mean? Not trying to be an ass, just not going to assume this means something without asking.
 
23536 said:
My point of view on this may not be the majority point of view, or even the most responsible one, but it's based on the notion that personal freedom is supreme.

What I'm saying is, remove the prescription requirement, and relegate the doctor to the status of a consultant with absolutely no legal power. If I'm not mistaken, that's how it used to be before this war on drugs business came about.

Teach harm reduction in the public schools, and limit access to substances to those who are above an agreed-upon age of responsibility.

Our ancestors had even less restriction than this, and the human race thrived regardless.

Plus, unless some new information has emerged, there's no proof that increasing access increases fatal overdoses.
Click to expand...


Our ancestors also owned slaves and had women sitting at home because their job was to do housework. With no restrictions on these substances it will go back to the worst parts of the olden days (not saying slavery will come back). It was said that a majority (forgot the exact percent) but it was over 50% of housewives were hooked on liquid opiates and heroin. It would create a lot more addicts if not more overdoses and that is a fact. Once there were more regulations and less access, this created less people getting these drugs therefore...less people using. Common sense. There is also tons of harm reduction everywhere and there also NO PROOF that THIS HARM REDUCTION taught decreases anything....
 
rog said:
i firmly believe that nobody should be left in pain because doctors are afraid of giving out too many pain pills
Click to expand...

I think we should have OTC codeine, DHC, benzylmorphine or ethylmorphine. As for the ease or difficulty of receiving an Rx for moderate-severe chronic pain, I only have anecdotal accounts to work off of (positive IRL, negative here), though I do believe per capita opioid prescriptions are still increasing.
 
23536 said:
Let everyone have whatever they want. Doctors should be advisers, nothing more.
Click to expand...

This.

Making pain meds harder to get for anyone just increases the black market ability of them and the use of street heroin.

Reading your second post here numbers.

Genius the whole world would be a Bette place and education is key.
 
Roger&Me said:
...because its impossible for a doctor to know objectively how much pain a patient is in, so its best to err on the side of liberal prescribing in that instance.
....
free access to adequate pain relief should be a basic human right. it literally terrifies and sickens me to think that someday i could end up with severe, chronic pain and not be able to get adequate pain relief because some people i don't even know took too much and OD'd.
Click to expand...
Like I already pointed out, you can test to see whether they are the ones taking the medication, solving half the problem.
....
Free access to drugs is not even remotely close to being a human right. According to your philosophy, it is your responsibility to not even get sick. If you're too stupid to wear PPE in a contaminated area then natural selection takes one step forward.
 
Roger&Me said:
i don't think mcdonalds executives should feel guilty about the obesity epidemic, i think they should be laughing all the way to the bank at the people who keep eating their terrible 'food'. where does personal responsibility come into this discussion? are people no longer responsible for their own well being? if they're not, who is?

but yeah, NKB's comment about antibiotic resistance is making me rethink some of my comments though. that is one nuance i didn't think about, and kinda throws a wrench in some of my earlier conjectures (touché, my good man. touché). i think the issue of opiates and pain management is different though, because its impossible for a doctor to know objectively how much pain a patient is in, so its best to err on the side of liberal prescribing in that instance. WRT the issue of antibiotic resistance, doctors can assay/biopsy and assess the existence and extent of infection. this is not possible to do relative to pain, there is no objective assay that can be performed to determine whether or not a patient is actually in pain.

i firmly believe that nobody should be left in pain because doctors are afraid of giving out too many pain pills. toxicologically, pharmaceutical opiates are extremely safe, and dependence is treatable. the problem is massively overblown, and i firmly believe that free access to adequate pain relief should be a basic human right. it literally terrifies and sickens me to think that someday i could end up with severe, chronic pain and not be able to get adequate pain relief because some people i don't even know took too much and OD'd.
Click to expand...

personal responsibility is part of the picture - not the whole thing. it could even be said to be a small part of the picture, as who you become (and how responsible you become) depends entirely on things beyond your control - like who you're born to. i think it's called 'the accident of birth' in the social sciences. not to mention the similar philosophical argument that there really isn't any free will as who we are and our resulting actions are all tied to the past, which we had no control over.
but forgetting that, and assuming people do have some personal responsibility - because of course they can't just shirk it off as poor upbringing/genetics - and because without people taking responsibility for their actions to some degree their would be chaos, you still have these huge forces outside of the person that influence them - whether it be natural or manmade. manmade things we can control, natural we can't - that's why you don't generally blame someone when they are struck by lightening. but i guess some people confuse manmade capitalism with the natural greed inherent in most people, and assume that it can't be helped as it's a force of nature, and so we should just accept it and blame the victim - blame the person struck by lightening for walking in the rain. it supports your 'just-world hypothesis' - another social science term - sorry.
so instead of trying to fix these huge forces that are spending billions of dollars studying how to manipulate people's behaviors for money, we should blame the weakest/most unfortunate pepole who get sucked into the addictions that these corporations provide with incessant and incisive marketing, manipulating people in every way that they can. it doesn't surprise me that so many people buy into this anti-social philosophy - america being the 'rugged individualist' Horatio Alger-esque country that it is, but it's utter bullshit created and perpetuated by the people who benefit from it's dispersion, namely the rich and powerful - who of course are naturally the smartest and most worthy, as the system is good and true (or else it wouldn't have been so effective as to make them rise to the top.) *sarcasm*
so yes, let's laugh at the obese kid killing herself in public with food because we weren't so unlucky - because we're so much more clever. because survival of the fittest should apply to human beings in their amazingly Unnatural ecosystem - where psychopathic traits are often more valuable to success than creativity and intelligence, in order to continue Natural selection.

also i don't think the pharmaceutical opiates are 'safe' as they are rough on the liver. maybe you mean pure heroin? i think that doesn't really harm the body. i read that all the opiates that the world needs could be grown on 25 square miles. so keep laughing with those mcdonalds execs, as they are of the same blood as the people who will make sure that such simple solutions to opiate shortages will never happen. we will never see a surplus of pain medication because of your 'free' market friends - not because of the government. they are the ones who control the government.
 
Last edited:
All the worlds opioid needs could not be grown in 25 sq miles... Where did you get this nonsense idea?
 
astudentforever said:
also i don't think the pharmaceutical opiates are 'safe' as they are rough on the liver.
Click to expand...

i've seen no evidence suggesting this. opiates are even regularly given to people with liver failure. toxicologically, pharmaceutical opiates are almost totally benign.

i don't have the energy to respond to the rest of your post right now, but might at some point.
 
I just can't believe some people here truly think that everyone should be able to get whatever they want. This would create exactly what the problems in a lot of 3rd world countries are having. Creating a generation of addicts is no way to go about any society I want to be apart of. Mind as well start having annual purges and killing off the weak and the stupid. I guess that is one way of getting natural selection back
 
Roger&Me said:
i've seen no evidence suggesting this. opiates are even regularly given to people with liver failure. toxicologically, pharmaceutical opiates are almost totally benign.

i don't have the energy to respond to the rest of your post right now, but might at some point.
Click to expand...
They just changed US regulations on this I believe, reducing the amount of acetaminophen to 325 mg in prescribed opioids.
 
Roger&Me said:
i've seen no evidence suggesting this. opiates are even regularly given to people with liver failure. toxicologically, pharmaceutical opiates are almost totally benign.

i don't have the energy to respond to the rest of your post right now, but might at some point.
Click to expand...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1603777/

i'm not sure if you would include methadone in your opiates, but i knew someone who died of hepatitis - likely from using methadone for a long time.

Thus, based on current and previous studies with respect to the liver, it appears that chronic opiate abuse leads to: 1) increased risk of viral infection; 2) enhanced viral replication; 3) increased liver injury; 4) decreased hepatic glutathione levels; and 5) increased hepatic fibrosis.

and don't many if not most pharm opiates include things that are definitely hard on the liver, like tylenol?
 
How do you contract hepatitis from methadone.. sounds more like he died of hepatitis.. not saying the methadone didn't make this more rapid.. not saying it did either.

So was it addiction and the lack of personal care.. or was it directly attributable to the drugs.. just saying cause addicts can choose to take care of themselves.

Also what was the underlying reason they used these drugs, was that taken into consideration?
 
neversickanymore said:
How do you contract hepatitis from methadone.. sounds more like he died of hepatitis.. not saying the methadone didn't make this more rapid.. not saying it did either.

So was it addiction and the lack of personal care.. or was it directly attributable to the drugs.. just saying cause addicts can choose to take care of themselves.

Also what was the underlying reason they used these drugs, was that taken into consideration?
Click to expand...
Opiates enhance liver damage. As far as how someone contracted HVC or why they were taking methadone, probably intravenous drug use and addiction treatment.
 
*Asclepius* said:
I just can't believe some people here truly think that everyone should be able to get whatever they want. This would create exactly what the problems in a lot of 3rd world countries are having. Creating a generation of addicts is no way to go about any society I want to be apart of. Mind as well start having annual purges and killing off the weak and the stupid. I guess that is one way of getting natural selection back
Click to expand...

I've been super busy so I couldn't respond to you earlier, and actually still can't properly respond, but Switzerland, Portugal and Holland have opened up access to heroin, and the results are very surprising. Among other things, usage rates have gone DOWN. I'll post sources when I get some time, but the conclusions you're jumping to are inconsistent with reality (especially your contention that there is no proof that harm reduction works).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top