The opioid epidemic is projected to claim 1.22 million U.S. lives this decade without new efforts to stem the crisis, according to a report that traces the roots of the problem and offers in-depth solutions.
One thing I find particularly bothersome and troubling about how we’ve been dealing with opioids is the shift to make it tougher and tougher to get them. In order to treat some chronic pain I have that has developed over the past several years I’ve turned to drugs which diminish pain of various sorts: dissociatives, opioids, marijuana, etc.; as well as drugs which can help keep my mind off pain. However, I only recently pursued a small script for opioid pain meds (5 vicodin per month) to be used when I do activities which I often pursue such as hiking and dancing which really aggravate my pain.
Going through this process has been revealing in even more ways than I previously understood. For one, they wanted to drug test me to get access to opioids, as in if my use of other drugs wouldn’t be an indicator that perhaps my pain wasn’t being managed by medicine or that other drug use couldn’t be minimized by being treated appropriately. It is also interesting to me that if I had failed a drug test, what recourse would I have for chronic pain? I could certainly walk a few blocks from my house and purchase some fentanyl on the street, but maybe that’s at least part of why we have such a crisis right now? After getting my prescription the first time I went to get it refilled it was denied by my insurance carrier - apparently they need the doctor, which prescribed it, to also sign off, AGAIN on any more than 7 pills in any 90 day period. There’s an absurd amount of gatekeeping to get access in the first place.
However, now that I do have access and have been taking the medication I find it interesting that they have made zero effort to schedule any follow-up appointments and zero effort to ask me how I’m handling the drug. I do not think I’ll ever get addicted to opioids as I have no desire to use it repeatedly and recreationally, but they seemed a lot more interested in stopping me from getting access than from checking whether I could use the drugs appropriately or had any issues with following the prescription or moderating my usage. While it had been clear to me from the beginning that gatekeeping was the route the industry had been pushing towards for quite some time (I work in healthcare and am aware of some the legislation and policy which has significantly minimized which providers have authorization to prescribe opioids in the first place and how control over prescription strength, renewal, etc. has been clamped down upon as well), I was unaware how bad the gatekeeping had progressed in recent years despite the increasing toll it’s had on American society.
I’m still quite convinced that more transparency, rather than more gatekeeping, is the appropriate route forward. People who want the drug will find access to the drug, full stop. By making it harder for people to acquire the drug through legal means you merely push people to buying the drug on the street and eliminate any possibility for medical intervention. We need to open doors and encourage conversation rather than shutting them, locking them, and throwing people in jail when they seek what they want elsewhere.
One thing I find particularly bothersome and troubling about how we’ve been dealing with opioids is the shift to make it tougher and tougher to get them. In order to treat some chronic pain I have that has developed over the past several years I’ve turned to drugs which diminish pain of various sorts: dissociatives, opioids, marijuana, etc.; as well as drugs which can help keep my mind off pain. However, I only recently pursued a small script for opioid pain meds (5 vicodin per month) to be used when I do activities which I often pursue such as hiking and dancing which really aggravate my pain.
Going through this process has been revealing in even more ways than I previously understood. For one, they wanted to drug test me to get access to opioids, as in if my use of other drugs wouldn’t be an indicator that perhaps my pain wasn’t being managed by medicine or that other drug use couldn’t be minimized by being treated appropriately. It is also interesting to me that if I had failed a drug test, what recourse would I have for chronic pain? I could certainly walk a few blocks from my house and purchase some fentanyl on the street, but maybe that’s at least part of why we have such a crisis right now? After getting my prescription the first time I went to get it refilled it was denied by my insurance carrier - apparently they need the doctor, which prescribed it, to also sign off, AGAIN on any more than 7 pills in any 90 day period. There’s an absurd amount of gatekeeping to get access in the first place.
However, now that I do have access and have been taking the medication I find it interesting that they have made zero effort to schedule any follow-up appointments and zero effort to ask me how I’m handling the drug. I do not think I’ll ever get addicted to opioids as I have no desire to use it repeatedly and recreationally, but they seemed a lot more interested in stopping me from getting access than from checking whether I could use the drugs appropriately or had any issues with following the prescription or moderating my usage. While it had been clear to me from the beginning that gatekeeping was the route the industry had been pushing towards for quite some time (I work in healthcare and am aware of some the legislation and policy which has significantly minimized which providers have authorization to prescribe opioids in the first place and how control over prescription strength, renewal, etc. has been clamped down upon as well), I was unaware how bad the gatekeeping had progressed in recent years despite the increasing toll it’s had on American society.
I’m still quite convinced that more transparency, rather than more gatekeeping, is the appropriate route forward. People who want the drug will find access to the drug, full stop. By making it harder for people to acquire the drug through legal means you merely push people to buying the drug on the street and eliminate any possibility for medical intervention. We need to open doors and encourage conversation rather than shutting them, locking them, and throwing people in jail when they seek what they want elsewhere.