Blogs

Having read the research, I’m confident it’s not just a matter of decision-making, or willpower, or even depression.

When the push to use more opioids for pain began, we kept hearing that there were 100 million chronic pain patients in the United States, most of whom were untreated (or undertreated).

We should anticipate that many patients with opioid disorders will also be in treatment for some chronic medical disorder.

It’s also possible for one study to validate a viewpoint and another study to validate a contradictory view.

Money is a tool that allows some to delay the inevitable. They construct a protective bubble that minimizes the risk of getting caught and the other consequences that follow addiction.

This goes back to a problem in assessing pain. There’s no physical test for what is essentially a subjective experience.

There’s a civil rights issue: Over time, suspension of those rights can (and often does) become the new normal.

That was always the flaw with the concept of fighting a “war” on drugs– who exactly is the enemy?

Eventually it’s the business that adapts to a changed environment. But before they do, some will go to great lengths to prop up the revenue from their current opioid products.

Of course, we still lose several hundred thousand people annually. But that’s actually progress.