Thank you. He is doing much better, but I don't think, as a parent, you ever stop worrying.

 

Prevention is the best defense. I would add, awareness and open communication with health care providers.

 

I have concerns about surgeries as much as anything. When you are dealing with street or recreational drug use, I think it's different because that's what most people lack sympathy or understanding about. With prescription drugs as a gateway addiction, it's harder to see it coming.

 

My advice would be to use the least amount of pain medication possible, always...but having had rebuilds myself, I understand the pain aspect as well.

 

Glad he's doing better, and as a parent of two young ladies worrying is what we do.

 

As for those that didn't slip into addiction as a result of pain medicine/incorrect dosage and improper medical observation, I feel no sympathy for them. I do for their families.

 

This 100%.

 

My wife has one less sister and my mid-50's inlaws have a 3 year old boy because of it. Been 2 years this past June. It's heartbreaking seeing her mom and stepdad on the bad days when they see something remind them of her. Or seeing her mom completely exhausted from chasing the 3 year old around all day long, knowing she's gotta do it all over again pretty much every single day.

Let me tell you a little story that refutes your opinion:

 

Young kid, maybe 15 or 16, playing high school football at a high level, hurts his back...it's severe enough that he never plays another down of football or even participates in another sport during high school. Multiple doctors, specialists in the field of back injuries, can't do anything for him for months and months except administer pain relief.....oxycontin to be specific...

 

Fast forward 6 - 8 months....one pill no longer kills the pain, or two, or 5 - 8 a day...so the teenager seeks more, and more, and more....until one day, he gets caught with more than 9 pills...(because in the state of Kentucky, more than 9 pills in your possession gets you a trafficking charge) and he's looking at 10 years in the state penitentiary for Trafficking in Controlled Substance.....and he's a senior in high school.

 

This is self-inflicted addiction....

 

This is the decision to start using....

 

This is how you get addicted in the first place....

 

I quit asking for sympathy for this situation many years ago and turned to God and my rock solid spouse to help me understand the "why" behind all this....it just is, and everyday you wake up, worry, shake it off and get on with your life the best you can....

 

I'm going to be attending a visitation and funeral for a young man this weekend that was addicted to heroin.....I have sympathy for his parents, because I understand, to some extent, what it's like to have those experiences.....

 

I was lucky, my son went to jail and isn't dead....

 

Very unfortunate circumstance, to be sure.

 

It may refute my opinion to an extent, but only when talking about pain killers. That story doesn't really apply to heroin, cocaine, etch. Maybe I'm different, but there's no way I take five or more pain killers in one day. No way. It's just not safe. I would have beaten down the door of every doctor within six hours of me before I did that.

IDK, I see more and more articles showing how addiction is a genetic trait in people. Whether it be drugs, caffeine, food, adrenaline.

 

I'm not buying addiction begin genetic. Especially not to drugs.

Very unfortunate circumstance, to be sure.

 

It may refute my opinion to an extent, but only when talking about pain killers. That story doesn't really apply to heroin, cocaine, etch. Maybe I'm different, but there's no way I take five or more pain killers in one day. No way. It's just not safe. I would have beaten down the door of every doctor within six hours of me before I did that.

 

It 1000% applies to heroin...in a lot of cases, this is exactly how one turns to heroin, directly from prescription pain pills. It hits the same receptors, so same or similar effect.

 

When you are talking about addiction and and addicts mind, there is no such thing as viewing "safe" as a condition of satisfying the addictive tendencies.

 

You can never make this a rational argument because there is nothing rational at all about it...addiction doesn't work that way.

I'd have a tendency to think that whoever pushed this had nefarious intentions and it wouldn't surprise me that we come to find that it was someone within the ranks of narcotic investigations who were either trying to thin the herd, all the while scaring the masses away from ever starting, or continuing to take the drug. It may never come out, but this would make more sense than a dealer trying to kill off his customers.

 

This is a prevailing argument in many communities. The African American community has proposed that cocaine was utilized in a similar method many years ago.

 

It is the dirtiest business in the business and likely could not have been perpetuated without at least some involvement along the way by a larger entity.

It 1000% applies to heroin...in a lot of cases, this is exactly how one turns to heroin, directly from prescription pain pills. It hits the same receptors, so same or similar effect.

 

When you are talking about addiction and and addicts mind, there is no such thing as viewing "safe" as a condition of satisfying the addictive tendencies.

 

You can never make this a rational argument because there is nothing rational at all about it...addiction doesn't work that way.

 

I stand firmly behind my belief that addiction is a choice made by those individuals. I am willing to concede that there are certain cases (similar to your situation) that are a bit different, but at the end of the day, a choice was still made. There are far too many people that take prescribed medicine for extended periods of time and don't continue to use afterwards. Gateway drugs are only that if someone chooses to continue.

 

It's a sad epidemic, one that doesn't really seem to have an end. I don't expect sympathy for the bad decisions I choose to make, therefore I rarely give it to others.

I'm not buying addiction begin genetic. Especially not to drugs.

 

Then what causes you to be addicted to something?

Then what causes you to be addicted to something?

 

You choose to try it and then continue using?

I heard that every dose of Narcan costs $40. That is $40 that enables these junkies to get up, walk away and use again tomorrow. $40 better spent on homelessness, food pantries, education etc...

I agree there are some folks who started on prescribed painkillers and graduated but I think the majority of these people are just junkies. Started with smaller drugs illegally and just kept increasing the potency to keep the high.. I have been to 4 funerals for heroin overdoses and not one of the 4 were hurt in sports or work and started on pain killers. They may have been on pain killers but it was because they got them illegally and liked the high.

 

There were 50 od's in less than 2 days, I bet very few of them were from people who started heroin because they were hurt and prescribed legal drugs and then moved on from there.

You choose to try it and then continue using?

 

You have a very limited understanding of the disease of addiction....it's not a choice anyone would make willingly so how do you reconcile that ?

Very unfortunate circumstance, to be sure.

 

It may refute my opinion to an extent, but only when talking about pain killers. That story doesn't really apply to heroin, cocaine, etch. Maybe I'm different, but there's no way I take five or more pain killers in one day. No way. It's just not safe. I would have beaten down the door of every doctor within six hours of me before I did that.

 

Actually, Dreamland leads you right down the path of how heroin replaced prescribed, both legally and illegally, opioids. Heroin has been traced to abuse of painkillers, particularly Oxy.

I agree there are some folks who started on prescribed painkillers and graduated but I think the majority of these people are just junkies. Started with smaller drugs illegally and just kept increasing the potency to keep the high.. I have been to 4 funerals for heroin overdoses and not one of the 4 were hurt in sports or work and started on pain killers. They may have been on pain killers but it was because they got them illegally and liked the high.

 

There were 50 od's in less than 2 days, I bet very few of them were from people who started heroin because they were hurt and prescribed legal drugs and then moved on from there.

 

On what research do you base your opinion ?

You have a very limited understanding of the disease of addiction....it's not a choice anyone would make willingly so how do you reconcile that ?

 

How do you get addicted to something if you never try it?