Yes indeed ! Prescription drugs have surpassed illicit drugs by almost two to one and growing ! Its getting so bad with opiates that the FDA has now ordered all manufacturers of opiate based narcotics have only 325 milligrams of acetaminophen and that's a done deal ! Shows you what a problem it is as people are destroying their livers and kidneys with acetaminophen . Also I hear that the FDA is really going to crack down on doctors who hand out opiates like candy ! Jimmy
I think it's a sad indictment - the power of the poppy is for many people, myself included, a way of coping - a strategy to ' get by '. I have struggled with opiates for longer than I care to remember, and in Europe, particularly, it funds the Taliban, as 90% of the heroin in the UK comes, originally, from Afganistan, and they control the opium trade. Food for thought....
barbiturates used to be top dog (or at least, a big dog)...but they don't hardly exist anymore. they killed too many people......today's downers aren't like the ones of the 60's and 70's.
as to coke and meth, i think there's fewer people in these forums because relative to how easy opiates are to get, there just aren't as many people on those drugs. opiates are much much easier to get.
if this forum had existed in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, it would have been a much different trend. yellow jackets and red devils and christmas trees.......or black beauties.
lucky those days are long gone... now if doctors can just get a handle on the opiates!
Probably all the stress we have to endure! lol....still not an excuse at all!!!
I have also noticed that there seems that women , especailly moms, out number men on here. I could be way off on that and maybe I am more set to notice postings by them since I am also a mom.Just another observation :) H
I think the same as most here. Almost everywhere you turn there are pain killers and people are turning to them sooo much easier than before. It's easy to get them from doctors and on the street so there's no real "running out" of them. I don't think I don't know ANYONE who hasn't taken or still is taking pain killers, either because they really need them, or for recreational purposes!!! That's quite alarming if you ask me!
Looking back, I hate that I was able to get them so easily, I never went to a methadone clinic.. I was prescribed opiates for pain, but moved long distance 4 times in 2 years due to my job. Never missed a dose. Each new pain doctor just kept giving me the same pills, and never looked at the addiction aspect...The pain docs were not trying to help me improve my quality of life. They were just letting me exist in a painful yet numb state.. I recently switched to a small town family doc- who does a thorough checkup every month, and listens to me. He helped me with the taper and I'm happy to be a quitter :)
Since the inception of Pain Management clinics and doctors there is much more abuse than ever. One huge factor is that since chronic pain has been realized to be a real problem more and more people become addicted/dependant than ever before. A great deal of people have become addicted because of these facts, they have been living thier lives in pain and then a PM helps them by prescribing opiates such as oxycontin and so called controlled release opiates. The problem with this is once the body gets use to the drugs you have to have your doses increased. This is a merry-go-round and it is hard to get off this ride.
The above happened to me and before I knew it I was addicted. When oxycontin first came out PURDUE pharma was telling doctors that it was a miracle drug as they could give it to their chronic pain patients and if they took it as prescribed they WOULD NOT GET ADDICTED. This was false advertising on Purdue's part, which btw they were sued for. So I hope I answered your question.
I agree that it is so easy to get them, and soooo hard to get away from them! I'm on day 11 and the wds are getting better each day! It's the mental part that is hard to deal with.
In my experience in drug court out of 15 people in my group 12 of us are pill addicts. It is ashame that doctors prescribe so many narcotics without giving a second look at addiction. I used to work for a neurologist and he rx so much pain meds (including me) THat is why I feel so strongly about educating yound children about the dangers of rx meds addiction. I was in denial of my addiction for a while cause I got it from a pharmacy. It is just as bad as any other drug in my opion...just saying :)
I remember the 60's were the hallucinogenic years, the 70's were the downer years, the 80's were the Cocaine years and now we are in the RX Generation. It has been a drug of choice for a long time and it is scary. They can be legally obtained which makes it even harder to stop the insanity. I don't remember any other drug through the years that is so widely used and abused like opiates. It's a sorry state we are in.
My prayers are with anyone trying to break the cycle.
Pain pill's are the No1 addiction in the US right now and it is growing daily......
i feel that Painkillers are so widely persribed for longtrem use but get " into trouble " and come here searching for answers this site starts were most Dr. stop when the Dr say no more