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Comment by newacct0 | Hacker News Reader

> 75% drug addiction rate

Are you saying that 3 out of 4 people in the US are addicted to one drug or another, or am I misunderstanding.

> there was 70%+ opioid prescription rate

This I can completely believe. I broke a bone, and when the doctor was asking how much pain I was in out of 10. I said 0, when I don't move it. They still prescribed me opioids. I asked if they expected the pain to increase, and they said they expected it to actually get less painful to move overtime if anything, and if it started hurting to get seen by another doctor. When asked about the painkillers then the answer was "Just in case".

That does seem way too high, unless they're including caffeine and alcohol, in which case I guess I could believe it.

I would add sugar too.

Let's throw in "high on life" just to make sure.

In a discussion of life expectancy, excess carbohydrate consumption in a nation with 75% overweight/obese population seems pretty relevant. Surely, sugar is the single biggest source of excess carbohydrate consumption.

And the way people thirst for their sweet treats and drinks, it certainly looks like addiction. Not that it removes any culpability of other excess carb consumption like alcohol and breads.

While I agree sugar addiction is a serious issue the USA (and much of the world) faces, caffeine and alcohol are both technically drugs :)

if you think thats ridiculous I once got a two month script for opiate painkillers after my wisdom teeth were removed. "just in case" was the excuse as well. pretty pathetic when most of the discomfort was easily controlled with half an aspirin and some rest.

I think when you need it you need it quickly because if the pain starts to get out of hand the pills will no longer have any effect. Is it so hard to not take them if you don't need them?

For me, no. But judging by the numbers in the opiate crisis it is for a lot of people.

They have substantial resale value, if you know the right people.

When I got my wisdom teeth surgically removed, the pain was quite bad and I was glad to have something stronger than over the counter. My prescription was only for 1 week. When it ran out, I still had some pain not fully controlled by over the counter pain meds.

Well you were pretty lucky then. I've had pain for weeks after a surgical extraction that was hardly touched by 800mg ibuprofen. It depends a lot on how well it heals, IIRC. And other considerations like whether incisions were required.

I wonder if this has changed since then though. I had surgery on my shoulder a couple of years ago, and had a one week prescription for opioids, then it was as much Tylenol as I could eat but nothing stronger.

To be fair regarding the pain, I was in approximately 0 pain when I first broke my wrist, to the point where I didn't even realize it was broken until I realized that I couldn't move my hand. I definitely got worse over the next 24 hours or so, after they had set it back and sent me home with a soft plaster half-cast thing.

But I definitely didn't need opioid painkillers, acetaminophen did just fine. Same goes for my wisdom teeth.

This was a couple of days after the break. I definitely knew I broke it at the time! Luckily I didn't need anything setting or really anything at all.

70+% of what though?

> There is a 75% drug addiction rate in the United States currently

This number doesn't pass the sniff test unless you're including caffeine dependency.

In 2015 NIH reported 10% had ever had a substance abuse problem:

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/10-percent-us-...

75%! Can you imagine the party on the streets, holy moly!

>It's the opiod crisis

That's an bold statement to make. Canada is also experiencing a historic opiod crisis right now, but their life expectancy is dropping no near as fast as US. Something else is going on.

EDIT: I don't think the parent post should be flagged. The opioid crisis is real and has a noticeable effect on life expectancy. It's just not the whole story, that's all.

But is Canada doing better at mitigating the damage from the opioid crisis? For example safe injection sites presumably lower the fatality rate of drug addiction quite significantly.

As a Canadian I can tell you, no. This year British Columbia on average has 5 deaths per day from fentanyl OD, rising from 3/day from just 2 years ago.

The majority of deaths are normal people who used contaminated recreational drugs in their home, as oppose to street junkies that are quickly revived by ambulances.

So BC is doing a good job of saving the lives of street junkies? That sounds like successful mitigation to me.

In an ironic way, yes. People who quietly OD in their house die while junkies are quickly noticed by their street pals and revived (and would often fight the paramedic for breaking their high.)

(Apparently it's now 6 deaths/day, up from 5/day in 2021).

I suspect the (grand)parent is flagged because of completely bogus numbers.

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html

This would indicate that after a peak in 2012 of 81.3 prescriptions for every 100 people, it has decreased to 43.3 in 2020.

That doesn't necessarily mean 81.3 people out of 100 have prescriptions, if people can have more than one prescription per year. I'd assume the affected people probably get something like monthly prescriptions? (not sure if that's how it works)

Giving the prescription rate as a percentage confused me (though it seems commonly done). What's meant is the number of prescriptions per 100 persons, per year. I assume a rate of 70 could mean 70 persons received one prescription each, or one person received 70 prescriptions?

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html

Not the global pandemic?

A disease that has taken the lives of over 1,000,000 people in the US, most of them elderly? I doubt it had an effect on the numbers.

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