Thanks To Facebook And Twitter And politics, we are having a rash of rash conclusions about what should be going on in the world. Last night I heard on Fox News that oxycontin was responsible for drug deaths and was falsely promoted by the drug company as a safe drug that could be taken for pain in increasing amounts and was responsible for a rash of deaths due to people becoming addicted to the drug implying that nobody should be-be taking the drug even reasonably for moderate pain relief. The speaker was completely sure that nobody should have access to the drug even if they suffered from intolerable pain without it. Needless to say that this speaker was very confident about his conclusions but he had totally left out the other side of the story since it didn’t affect him. Opinion-oriented presentations can lead to one-sided presentations and to making decisions that affect people who are not misusing the drug and who can’t receive massive amounts of drugs under current prescription laws and who wouldn’t ever try to get them from the black market.
I am one of those patients. I have neuropathy due to spinal stenosis and even though I was successfully operated on many years ago to prevent me from becoming a quadriplegic; I still had some neuropathy which initially developed before the surgery which still exists and persists. I am on medication for this but it is limited in what it can do and it has progressed so there are times when the pain is intolerable and the medication for the neuropathy can’t control it. I also take over the counter pain medications with my doctor’s knowledge but there are times when neither medication can control the symptoms and there are times when I feel like I could wind up in the emergency room which is some distance away and an intolerably long ambulance ride because I can’t take the symptoms which involve spasms and burning pain. I receive a limited amount of oxycontin which I cautiously use for this but not every time it happens which can be every day, but I limit it by what I might have to do that day and what I can tolerate.
I fortunately or unfortunately have had oxycontin before after a couple of surgeries and in one case developed intractable constipation and loss of time where I thought a long period of time had passed and it only was a few minutes. I had a pump that time which was supposed to limit how much of the drug I got but it was too much for me and on top of that it seemed to me that nobody was checking on me either.
To me, it seemed that presentation was made by a “smart aleck” that thought he knew what he was talking about, but who had not really covered the subject or investigated what he was told or read somewhere and who could be responsible for a group of people who might not abuse the drug not getting the pain relief that they needed and would cause needless suffering.
It seems to me that people often promote ideas about things that will not have a direct effect on them rather carelessly and often from a dictatorial point of view being that most dictators tell others what to do when they themselves will suffer no direct effects from their own commands.
