How is painkiller distribution in the UK? In the US, ethnic people are often denied pain relief (on the racist belief that blacks/latinos will end up selling them), resulting in a high rate of opioid addiction specifically among caucasion people. Obviously there are real chronic pain patients, but with no way to gauge pain other than the patient's vocalization of it and our pharmaceutical companies desires for profit--it's gotten out-of-hand. I remember when I got a tooth pulled, the procedure was done well without any pain following it (and I told them there was no pain) and they gave me a percocet script anyway
I was like 12 at the time and another family member ended up eating them all because I said I didn't need them LOL. I found this out many years later though.
There was a specific doctor who became famous for prescribing high dose opiates. Proably some of his patients were bluffing, but a large number of them couldn't live with the pain they felt on a regular basis. His prescriptions were quite high iirc around the 80+ milligrams and one patient overdosed. I don't know if she had taken more than the script recommendation but she was an elderly woman. The doctor was legally prosecuted and forced to retire practice. One of his patients committed suicide after the script was taken away and left a suicide video behind stating how the doctor was the only one who was able to treat his severe chronic pain, and that he didn't want to live anymore with what he felt. A large number of his patients had similar complaints and trouble coping afterwards. Now, I don't know anything about legally if policies changed where if a doctor is found guilty for medical malpractice that the scripts are affected. But it's just a tricky situation where people really need them to get out of bed in the morning, but at the same time so many of these pills are set aside for recreational use. I hope they either stop prescribing them for mild pain situations, or find a better way to gauge the patient's pain other than their word. It makes it harder for real chronic pain patients to obtain a script when they actually need them for coping. Regardless, they've got to do something about it haha. We can't have everyone and their grandma on subs. For alot of people suboxone doesn't work or they constantly cheat around the sub timeline and still use. Our heroin is more potent than ever. Unless you have god tolerance from many years of use it's probably going to kill you if you manage to get your hands on a horrible batch. So many former chronic pain patients end up flocking to H when the scripts are revoked. Esp in places like baltimore where heroin is running rampant. It's really sad to me. Another solution is to distribute narcan in the same way painkillers are distributed like candy. I think I remember hearing that narcan is quite expensive and inefficient to be given out frequently. Maybe they can produce a cheaper alternative?
As it stands currently it is far easier to get opiates in the UK than in the US. We never had mass oxy scripts handed out to everyone so we don't have any "opioid epidemic", and our doctors are generally not racist like the American ones.
Now keep in mind the ease of getting certain scripts differs throughout the country simply because the NHS is not a centralised authority, but rather each area runs their own CCG (clinical care group) and they decide the guidelines doctors in that area should follow. The NHS is state run universal healthcare, and we also have private healthcare you can choose to pay for, the main benefits being access to treatments not covered under the NHS and much shorter waiting times - but private doctors are also much more loosely regulated and therefore are virtually free to act like pill mills if they wish.
I'll answer for the NHS since it's what most people have access to. If you have an operation you will get codeine, DHC, tramadol, or morphine. If you get put on a weak opioid, say codeine, and complain you are still in pain after an operation, you can get something stronger maxing out at morphine pretty easy. These are almost always IR preparations and only scripted for a couple months max. The most common morphine script in this case is Oramorph 10mg/5ml solution which amazingly is somehow not controlled.
Chronic pain is more tricky, and this is where you begin to see differences between CCG's. I know parts of the UK where doctors freely hand out opiate scripts every month to any woman who complains of period pains. Usually these are weaker opiates like codeine, DHC, or tramadol.
My own experience has shown it's pretty easy for me to get opiates on the NHS. I've had operations and got large doses of DHC (which I fucking love) thrown at me with morphine on top for breakthrough pain. I've also had the max dose of DHC scripted to me for back pain before, and this was not too difficult, the doc just pushed certain parts of my back and asked where it hurt, then made a diagnosis in 5 minutes and when I asked for painkillers I was just straight up given a script. But because these were long-term use they were XR.
Now I said before there's not as much element of racism in the UK medical system compared to the US, indeed many of our doctors are of Asian decent, but there is absolutely classism. If you come off looking middle class you will have much better luck getting a doctor to script you opiates in most cases. There's people here on BL who have accused me of lying about the scripts I get, but I assure you I am not. Stims, benzos, opiates, all easy for me to get scripted.
One thing that makes a surprising about of difference is wearing glasses. There is a cognitive bias whereby people with glasses are assumed to be intelligent, innocent, honest, etc. This effect is so strong that lawyers even tell defendants to wear glasses with clear lenses in court.
But ultimately if you go into the doctors and you look like an innocent middle class patient you will probably get the script you want assuming it's reasonable. Doctors are almost always themselves middle class and people will empathise with those who are similar to themselves.
A class of drug that is difficult to get scripted here is benzos. I had to get a referral from a private psychiatrist before my GP would give me those. They're mad paranoid about benzo scripts due to a huge class action lawsuit over diazepam addiction in the 90's which the doctors lost. But getting opiates is honestly a piece of piss. I even know people who managed to totally blag an oxy script just from their GP.
