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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

Folks not reaching for a pill bottle are pretty rare, IME. I think the author of this article is touching on something pretty valuable with the willingness to be uncomfortable or even to endure pain. When I broke my leg in college, they gave me morphine while I was in the hospital (which just made me annoyed and mad) and I never touched the take-home codeine. Was walking in an air boot "early", too, as I was assured I couldn't hurt myself thanks to the metal rod through my shin and it just...didn't hurt that much.

I might take a naproxen if I have a bad headache or I tweak my neck and I can't stop working to take care of myself, but that's maybe two or three times a year (and I am being well-compensated for it). I know people, healthy people, who pop an ibuprofen in the morning just out of habit.

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I don't think the average american uses that many pain pills.

OTC pain pills are a ~4 billion dollar industry. There are 320 million people so that's ~1$ / month in pain pill per person. And that's including both stuff that goes bad and is never used and daily Aspirin taken for cardiac health. https://www.chpa.org/OTCsCategory.aspx

5% of the population does take daily pain medication. At the same time it's common to go months without taking anything for pain.

Approximately 80 percent of the global opioid supply is consumed in the United States, which represents only 5 percent of the global population

"There was about 300 million pain prescriptions written in 2015,"

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/27/americans-consume-almost-all...

OTC = over the counter. There was a huge spike in prescription pain medications which has steadly declined over time.

While 2017 numbers are not in. 2016 Prescription pain medications are down 6% from 2015 and down 18% from 2012. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/maps/rxrate-maps.html

And again, we are talking less than one prescription per year per person on average. With many of these prescriptions for 2-3 days worth of pain management. Though again, a minority of people get a lot of pain medication.

> Approximately 80 percent of the global opioid supply is consumed in the United States, which represents only 5 percent of the global population

That article is borderline irresponsible with how it reports that metric.

80% of global prescription opiate medications are filled in the US, but that doesn't mean that 80% of those prescriptions are consumed in the US (or consumed at all). Nor does it include no-prescription opiates, which are generally much easier to obtain in most countries around the world (and also a lot cheaper) than their prescription counterparts.

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