chronic pain? tough shit.

where did this nation’s lopsided obsession with addiction come from?

the FDA has been advised to pull Vicodin and Percocet from the shelves. prohibit them altogether.

you know what those are, right? odds are high that you’ve gotten a prescription for one of them at some point. wisdom teeth, post-op, kidney stone, car accident. they’re pretty damn good at tamping down pain.

people with long-term chronic pain often receive these drugs. people who have cancer, fused spines, war wounds. that kind of thing.

but, because these prescription narcotics are pre-combined with generic tylenol (see fredericks’ detailed — and hilarious — piece in faster times for why that matters) they can in certain circumstances be more addictive, or more likely to result in accidental overdose, than they would solo.

so vicodin = codeine+tylenol, and percocet = oxycontin+tylenol. they are much easier for doctors to prescribe and pharmacists to dispense than the more harshly regulated sans-tylenol versions of those drugs.

but better for you to die screaming than become addicted. ANYTHING, in these puritanical united states, is preferable to addiction.

unless you’re talking about nicotine or alcohol, of course. those are different. they have lobbyists. check this out:

Tobacco addiction, the second-leading cause of death in the world, is a culprit for approximately 5 million deaths each year or 1 in 10 adult deaths.

in THE WORLD. the world includes those countries in which opiates are far less difficult to obtain than they are here. let me put this another way: even if our corner stores sold pharmaceutical-grade narcotics over the counter the same way they sell marlboros, the presumably resulting addictions would STILL not kill very many people.

got that?

not so many people die from alcohol — but drunks sure do wreak a lot more havoc on their way to the grave than regular old dope-fiends (or your grandma and her percocet habit) ever did. in fact, they might even kill you. in fact, if you ARE killed, chances that the perpetrator was drunk at the time that he shot/stabbed/bludgeoned you to death range from 30%-50% depending on which study you are reading and which country it was conducted in.

whole books have been written about the connection.

but the murderous junkie? the homicidal crackhead? nope. thanks primarily to our idiotic and ill-conceived  “war on drugs“, we have addicts committing violence (and assorted other crimes) in order to obtain their drug of choice, but rarely as a result of having taken them.

alcohol can fairly easily get you to hurt someone that you would not have hurt had you not been drinking; there is such no parallel in connection with narcotics or recreational drugs like pot or ecstasy.

plus, they are more fun than drinking. and don’t make you piss like a racehorse every five minutes.

i didn’t expect to find myself writing about The Drug Question a second time in july, with the month not even halfway over. but america has gone completely insane in this area, and i just can’t keep myself quiet.

very few people directly die from alcohol addiction — but drunks sure do wreak a lot more havoc on their way to the grave than regular old dope-fiends (or your grandma and her percocet habit) ever do. in fact, they might even kill you. in fact, if you ARE killed, chances that the perpetrator was drunk at the time that he shot/stabbed/bludgeoned you to death range from 30%-50% depending on which study you are reading and which country it was conducted in. whole books have been written about the connection.

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