Couple Died by Suicide After the DEA Shut Down Their Pain Doctor (2022)

Unless you've been there, you have no idea what soul shattering chronic pain is like. 85% of overdose deaths are from elicit drugs. What is the DEA is doing about the Fentanyl entering from China? Nothing.

I think the only appropriate future for controlled substances is a kind of restricted open availability with monitoring and support for abuse.

I really feel for chronic pain patients, having suffered from chronic (however not as severe) back pain myself for many years.

However, the propensity of American doctors to prescribe heavy-duty opiods is unheard of in pretty much the rest of the world. My cousin lives in the the U.S. and has top notch health insurance. After an accident and the subsequent surgery on her leg, she was certainly in pain but as European she was completely flabbergasted that she was offered Oxi for that. She vehemently declined and basically got by with 800mg of Ibuprofen per day for two weeks.

In Europe, doctors go for opiods outside the hospital setting if and only if all other options have been completely exhausted (incl. expecting the patient to tolerate some amount of pain for a limited period of time). I think the doctine in the American health care system that patients have to be completely free of pain at all times does much more harm than good.

The DEA might be the most useless, money-pit government agency out there.

close competition.

Eventually your addiction becomes so big no physician would risk the license to continue prescribing you drugs. Then you hit the streets which often leads to completely diminished life best case and death worst. There is no solution to people “building a better mousetrap.”

Of note: This hits somewhat close to home for me as I’ve suffered from lower back pain - from the age of 11 (or a bit earlier, amnesia’s a bitch) - that I can now say was & still is more painful than when I fully shattered my wrist (~21 y/o) in a gnarly accident. Also much worse than the aches & pains associated with getting hit by a car as a pedestrian (eh, PEV user more accurate) twice now.

Shoulder & neck pain near the same since ~13, & pelvic/hip pain roughly ~75% as bad, & but also just indescribably & unfathomably uncomfortable.

It’s so bad that when I’d very obviously shattered my wrist, I calmly walked into my backwoods emergency room simply to get an X-ray & nothing more so I could quickly get to a surgeon in a larger city. They told me I’d be screaming, that there was no way my wrist was broken, & I was only seeking drugs. After I made them pull up my medical history from Mayo Clinic & Harvards’ medical teaching school (Mass Gen. Hospital - apologies if I’m accrediting that incorrectly) they begrudgingly gave me an X-ray. Whatever radiology tech that was working the backwoods at 3am said there were no fractures, despite them being clearly visible on the monitor. They called it a sprain & offered me Tramadol for pain in the end, hoping it would make this drug seeker go away with his small bounty. I ripped up the script & told them to fuck off.

Luckily, I had insurance that made it so I could schedule w/a surgeon in my network online, & luckily, a highly rated hand surgeon had a near next day opening. He immediately saw two broken bones on the X-ray, & another bad spot he wasn’t 100% on. Ordered a CT scan, found 3 badly broken bones (scaphoid, most importantly), & told me I’d have likely permanently lost use of that hand in a week or two w/o surgery. Got me an emergency scheduling, & I came out w/5 screws. He himself was curious about my lack of screaming in pain once he saw the CT results - I told him about the condition affecting my shoulders & neck, neurogenic Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, & he seemed to immediately understand, though I was his first patient he’d personally seen with the condition.

But, I digress my ramblings.

Unmanaged chronic pain, even when the pain level isn’t particularly high - just constant, for weeks/months on end - will rob you of everything you managed to be capable of in life.

In my case, I went from acing my differential equations, thermodynamics, & fluid dynamics engineering classes, to name a few - to barely being able to do basic trigonometry on my best days. My nearly perfect grammar & writing skills (scored highest percentile in reading/writing on ACT & SAT, for whatever that’s worth. Also placed as a finalist in state spelling bee) are now complete dogshit - as can be seen in my HN comments - & I don’t feel as if I can articulate my thoughts better than a middle schooler at this point. Some of my engineering professors actually asked me why I didn’t go into something English/writing related, as my scores weren’t as high in math/science.

Despite a letter from Mass Generals Chief of Thoracic Outlet Syndrome program, essentially begging a surgeon in my state to refer me to proper pain management as my surgery kept getting cancelled (coronavirus shit), & that surgeon in my state promising me twice he would get me pain management - while looking me in the eyes - I showed up to a pain management appt, all documentation in hand, & was essentially laughed out of the office as a very particular type of young white male drug seeker. I do not believe I’d met a larger egoistical psychopath in my life at that point. Sociopaths/Psychopaths in medicine seem to be drawn to pain management positions. Well, I’m pulling that out of my ass - but support group anecdata seems to support the notion.

Anyways. If you are in severe pain that derails your entire full ride scholarship university education & your career. Even then. The US medical system does not give the slightest fuck about you. You are nothing more than a lazy drug seeker that wants to spend life on welfare in your drug induced euphoria. You will die if you don’t have the support/money to pursue other options. While I won’t get more into it - Mexico, of all places, is much more humane than the US when it comes to pain mgmt.

Final note: the opiates - I think Roxycodone 10mg - that the surgeon made me promise to take, as it would promote better healing of my wrist - was the first thing in my entire life, & at that point a decade of pure unadulterated suffering, to actually help my lower back pain. The first of 7 pills induced mild euphoria for the first ~15 minutes. No euphoria after that, only the strange sense of “holy shit I’m lying in bed & my back hasn’t hurt in 3 days”

The US medical system likely decided the fate of an otherwise fairly promising life long ago, & that fate is a death of despair.

Sorry for the text wall, didn’t plan on being so butthurt over this article.

Sorry these people died. But the fight goes on. When the time comes, I'll help in what way I can to fabricate scientific studies that say that fentanyl helps with cancer remission or depression. This is one of the few ways to make it palatable enough for the public to make legal. Pain is insufficient to convince them, but disease often is.

It worked with weed. It worked in some places for shrooms. And it worked for ketamine. With a little bit of faked data, I think we can make it work for more things.