Topic: opioids

The busier the doc, the easier to manipulate. And there’s continuing downward pressure from practice managers to see more patients in less time.

Mood and motivation are, of course, a big part of the discomfort associated with having chronic pain.

And now there’s the emergence of ‘tip sites’ on the Internet, dedicated to turning the reader into a better-prepared, more successful drug-seeker.

Diversion to abuse has been significant. Currently methadone represents only some two percent of all opioid prescriptions, but it’s been implicated in an astounding one-third of all opioid fatalities.

The evidence suggests we do not yet have a Krokodil epidemic. Although the media seems to do its best to help create one.

We’re in a drug epidemic with no South American cartels or Afghan drug lords to vilify.

Either way, it’s the drugs and alcohol that wind up killing the addict — not abstinence.

Most communities provide both options for opioid patients, and lacking a methadone for alcohol or cocaine, use a more traditional abstinence-based approach for those addictions.

Informed client choice means accurate information about the likely outcome of decisions made early in treatment.

Many of us already have painkillers sitting on a shelf in the bathroom medicine cabinet, alongside the aspirin and the allergy meds. Sometimes they’re unused from prior medical or dental problems.