^^I agree WISdad, but are they bad people or are they acting as you would expect addicts to act given their desperation to feed their addiction. Some of the “victimizers” are addicts because of the doctors who prescribed them opioids in the first place. I think there are more than just a “few easily identified doctors” overprescribing pain killers. There are doctors who are criminal and are doing it solely for money and then there are doctors who over-prescribe because they can’t say no to their patients or because they they don’t want to be bothered off-hours or because they believe 30 day scripts for opioids is an appropriate treatment. Doctors had/have the same issue when they over-prescribed antibiotics and ADHD medications. Our country is too dependent on easy fixes and popping pills. Addicts indeed deserve to share the responsibility, but doctors have the education to know they are part of the problem and I believe they need to fix their share of the problem.
Arrests related to over-prescribing and fraud in the news today:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-opioid-scams-justice-department-20170713-story.html
@Wisdad23 I absolutely agree with you, the opioid problem is a huge multifaceted problem from drug companies to health care providers to politicians to enforcement to and including. patients. So as I asked in # 51, why are we piling on dentists?
I don’t see dentists as a big problem. I have never seen an opiate addict with serial prescriptions from a dentist.
I have asked a lot of opiate addicts how they got started. Some say prescriptions. The next question is usually why their doctor kept prescribing them. The answer is virtually always that the patient malingered for more until the doctor cut him off. After cut off, the answer is beg, borrow, steal.
Some say that they were “self-medicating”, say for depression. I always ask where they learned that intravenous heroin is helpful for depression? The answer of course is nowhere. They are not self-medication, a specious euphemism for misbehaving.
I don’t believe that addicts are simply driven to get the drug they seek at all costs and are therefore non-responsible. Otherwise, how could an addict ever stop, or even delay, using? Opiate abuse seem to be especially corrupting to character relative to other drugs.
Contrary to popular mythology, opiate withdrawal is not that bad. For example, it would be more miserable and dangerous to have the flu. The issue is the opiate addicts intolerance of the symptoms, not the symptoms themselves.
A good book about opiates, which does lay some blame with physicans, is Romancing Opiates by Theodore Dalrymple.
I’m not sure this is specious. Some people who are prescribed an opioid for pain and who also have symptoms of anxiety or depression find that the opioid temporarily relieves the mental health symptoms. So they might be motivated to continue the opioid to control those symptoms even after they no longer need it for pain, especially if they don’t have access to more effective treatment for the mental health issue.
“So as I asked in # 51, why are we piling on dentists?”
OP here.
IF you had ACTUALLY read the WHOLE article, you would have learned that many current addicts [brains] were first chemically introduced to opiates years, WHEN they were children, after having dental procedures, such as wisdom teeth extraction.
That introduction occurred at a very susceptible time for immature developing human brains, especially those who are GENETICALLY more susceptible to addiction.
What has been realized lately is that there is a high % of the current adult addict population who were [ innocently] introduced to opiates via the dentist office when they were much younger.
THAT is what the article was about.
8-|
Or perhaps read the WHOLE studies cited in the article. They describe a more complex situation, than the parts selectively extracted for the article.
I did read the whole article including rereading the link in the article below by author Maia Szalavitz,
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/opioid-addiction-is-a-huge-problem-but-pain-prescriptions-are-not-the-cause/
as I interpreted Ms Szalavitz’s article, there was nothing to suggest that wisdom teeth extraction and opioids prescribed by dentists played a role in the later opioid misuse of the “many current addicts” you cite. According to Ms Szalavitz, 75% all opioid misuse starts with people using medication that wasn’t prescribed for them—obtained from a friend, family member or dealer.
I’m sorry I forgot to include, according to Ms Szalavitz’s article…And 90 percent of all addictions—no matter what the drug—start in the adolescent and young adult years. Typically, young people who misuse prescription opioids are heavy users of alcohol and other drugs. This type of drug use, not medical treatment with opioids, is by far the greatest risk factor for opioid addiction, according to a study by Richard Miech of the University of Michigan and his colleagues.
From post 67: “According to Ms Szalavitz, 75% all opioid misuse starts with people using medication that wasn’t prescribed for them—obtained from a friend, family member or dealer.”
For families in mid to upper incomes, especially those who have dental insurance, prophylactic wisdom teeth extraction has become the norm. In any given high school with this population, there are lots of teeth extractions and lots of opioids being prescribed. The “extras” might be tempting for recreational use amongst friends. Personally, I don’t believe giving a 30 dose prescription, especially before the procedure, is ever appropriate, and that’s what at least two oral surgeons in our area were giving out as late as 2014. At our local high school, if 50% of the senior class had the procedure with an Rx for 30 pills, that would be 225 students and 6750 pills. That amount certainly leads to the possibility for abuse, especially when coupled with “leftovers” from parent’s surgeries, etc. I have faith that most of the pills were responsibly handled, but I have no doubt some were not.
Smart kids do stupid things and drug experimentation goes with the age group. You just always hope you can parent your kids to avoid the pitfall, but I know great parents who had kids who messed up. In a nearby city, one high school football coach found out that some of his varsity members were using opioids to “play without pain” and to be able to “hit harder”. He reacted appropriately. I think we all have a responsibility to keep opioids out of the hands of teens, and I think dentists deserve the push back they’ve received over their excessive prescription amounts for wisdom teeth extraction.