spitfirebill wrote:Smarta$$ McPoopyPants wrote: You can pop a xanax/hydrocodone/vicodin or twelve, hop in your car and drive. But god forbid you get popped with an open beer or a joint. They gotta fill those jails and collect those taxes. /rantNot entirely true. I know people charged with DUI for prescription medication. Hell you can be charged even if you are just sleepy. Impaired is impaired. EDIT: Oh poo. I see Dr Hess already addressed this.
Just ask Tiger Woods!
In reply to Joe Gearin:
I LOL'ed.
Good point.
My wife's best friend's S-I-L got a DUI for taking hydrocodone. She had plastic surgery years ago after her husband walked out on her. I suspect she developed a habit at that time.
My dad is an addict. I could put down a laundry list of 'reasons', but they don't matter. The only reason he has stayed out of jail is because he's a health professional and they have a significant professional support network. He has had access to treatment and legal options that most people wouldn't have. He still has issues, which is why my kids don't see him very often, but the support he had allowed him to stay out of jail and keep his business until he retired.
This is what help can do. How do we provide this level of support to everyone? Can we? Should we? I don't know.
spitfirebill wrote:Smarta$$ McPoopyPants wrote: You can pop a xanax/hydrocodone/vicodin or twelve, hop in your car and drive. But god forbid you get popped with an open beer or a joint. They gotta fill those jails and collect those taxes. /rantNot entirely true. I know people charged with DUI for prescription medication. Hell you can be charged even if you are just sleepy. Impaired is impaired. EDIT: Oh poo. I see Dr Hess already addressed this.
But you and Hess understand my point, hopefully;
Open beer? Car smells like weed? Easy pickins for the fat lazy berkeleys who didn't make the football team in high school (cops,) whose job it is to collect taxes and fill privately owned prisons.
Meanwhile, Buckhead Betty who couldn't maintain her lane in her Lexus BEFORE she got whacked out on goofballs gets a "warning" or a $100 ticket.
We call our medicine "drugs," and our drugs "medicine."
The "War on drugs" created the demand for more prisons (or, in my opinion, the other way around.) Now the "private prison business" is a $70 billion industry with CONTRACTS with state and federal government gauranteeing "occupancy rates." (Asses in seats.)
I hope I don't start a flounder fest by saying this:
Addiction and drug problems are symptoms of a larger problem. Collectively as a society, when it comes to living a satisfying life, we seem to be are doing it wrong.
I know that there are individuals and groups that seem to getting along just fine. I know we all have many good days. But somewhere along the line, we seem to have adopted beliefs and expectations about ourselves, each other and what we are entitled to that are destructive to us personally and to our society. Whether we are talking government, economy, physical health, or mental health, it is working too poorly for too many.
I don't pretend to know all or even part of the answers. There is lot of hurt and a lot of healing that needs to happen. I am at point where I really want to talk with and listen to people who think differently from me. I have beliefs like everyone. But I am willing to admit that I can be wrong. 
I would to understand things better I and I would like to be understood better. I am not sure how to do that right now.
In reply to Type Q:
This thread seems to be a good start.
Addictions are a motherberkeleyer. Growing up I was around addicts as my dad helped some people he knew get into a program his church supports and a few times a year when the program would send speakers some of the young men would stay with us. None of these kids set out to be addicts but a perfect storm of circumstances led them there. One good thing to come out of meeting them is that I've stayed fairly clean. I have trouble with food, and could see myself servicing truckers for peanut butter cups were I not employed and have worked to keep my drinking in check and stay pretty clear of drugs.
If you've never gotten a high from drugs it would be hard to understand why people do them. After a car accident I got to have a morphine IV for a few days, a couple more days of Vicodin and then three weeks of OxyContin. The morphine I got in icu was a fantastic pain killer. I lost two days and by the account of my brother I kept giggling every time I thought I felt the morphine go up my arm. I was addressing the IV machine as my friend Grimace and insisted everyone in the room talk to him. They took me off that and gave me the Vicodin which did nothing for the pain and made me itchy. Then I got transferred to a rehab hospital and given some OxyContin to function and do my therapy. Like the pharmacist's bumper sticker said, Rush Is Right. It may have been the longest I've ever been in a good mood and in spite of the many broken bones I could have run through a brick wall. Luckily when they sent me home they didn't send me with a script and I had no means of leaving my apartment so I had no choice but to live without it. I have never been a big pain killer user since Tylenol, Motrin, etc really didn't do much for me but the pro grade stuff is in another league. After trying it I got a new appreciation for how easy it could've to develop a problem.
I had to replace a water dispenser faucet last week at a methadone clinic. Director at the dispensary told me they hand out close to 600 doses a day. Hard to believe 600 people a day go thru there and get "treatment", and therapy. Ultimately the cost to run this facility gets passed down to the non drug using segment of the population. The argument is that the patients won't go out and beg, steal, or prostitute in order to get their fix.
tr8todd wrote: I had to replace a water dispenser faucet last week at a methadone clinic. Director at the dispensary told me they hand out close to 600 doses a day. Hard to believe 600 people a day go thru there and get "treatment", and therapy. Ultimately the cost to run this facility gets passed down to the non drug using segment of the population.
As does the cost of putting them in jail.
In reply to Smarta$$ McPoopyPants:
Of course I understand.
docwyte wrote: The blame for the easy prescriptions falls directly on patients and the hospital administrators. The hospital sends out surveys to the patients to grade the hospital and the providers. If they get back a bad survey, the administrators rip the Docs a new one and the Docs pay is based on the survery results. So the Doc hand out the pain meds to the patients are happy....
Actually the federal government is what drives the above
Streetwiseguy wrote: Trying to control it from the prescription side causes some really horrible side effects, too. Chronic pain sufferers, who have a real and legitimate need, get caught up when its drug shoppers that need to be found and dealt with. Palliative care is made so very much more kind and bearable through the use of opiates...Do you want your grandmother to have to suffer through the ravages of cancer while she screams in her deathbed?
This is an excellent point
Pete Gossett wrote: While greatly oversimplified, the underlying reason is that people aren't emotionally equipped to deal with life and all the E36 M3 it dumps on us, especially when amplified by feeling trapped within a seemingly unescapable cycle of poverty/pain/abuse/depression. It's then perpetuated over generations. The other issue is that over the last century or so people have come to expect leisure, luxury, and relatively pain-free living as a given in life, which was actually a pretty rare exception throughout most of the history of human civilization.
The voice of reason. Saw this thread drifting into the politics of abortion and then another smart guy chimes in, thank you
Meth seems to be "worse" than heroin, based on the addicts I have taken care of through my ER responsibilities. Last guy had some interesting tattoos. Y-O-U on top of the left foot. Right foot had a four letter condensed version of FiretrUCK. His last 11 hospital admissions he has tested positive for meth every time, opiates and weed about half the time.
Timely thread. I just ran an Heroin overdose last night. It took about four times the usual dose of Narcan to get the patient breathing again. Apparently they are mixing the dope with fentanyl now. If this keeps up we will have to raise the amount of Narcan we carry on the firetruck.
In this case is was some kind of street smack that the patient shot up with. Typically 1mg of Narcan gets them breathing again. Not this time.
In reply to tr8todd:
If I understood right doses are not the number of people they see as each person is getting several days supply. My last post had me in the bus stop next to a methadone clinic and the system seems to be quite a mess. A line forms about an hour before it opens and pretty much three groups form.
A small group trying to get better. They are trying to stay at the front of the line in a tight pack. The goal is to get in and out because they're also trying to hold down a job that is probably not anywhere near the clinic. because they have a job they also may have a bit of money on them so getting mugged by groups 2&3 are a concern as is giving in to temptation and buying drugs from groups 2&3. I have a great deal of sympathy for these folks as they seem to know how screwed they are and unlikely success is.
They next group are straight junkies. They seem to have no desire to get better. They come to the program because they've been forced into it to avoid jail but are going no where. Generally they get their supply and then either trade it to group 3 for real heroin or if they have some money they'll keep the methadone and have a real good time. They would tend to OD across the street from me or stab each other about once a week. I got to know them and the local firemen by name after a while though we'd be better served letting Sanitation pick them up.
The third group were dealers. The would peddle heroin to the junkies and anyone else they could, buy/trade some of the methadone on the way out and shake some cash out of the guys in group one. If there was nothing going on at my post after the rush hour I'd mill about and make a pest of myself to try and frustrate them without getting myself into too much trouble. It is an interesting system and I'm sure it was designed with good intentions but time and bureaucracy have made it a mess. I don't know how the people working there came in every day.
Went to do rounds and meth head berk you guy walked out last night because ativan is not a substitute for meth. I wonder how long he will survive. Free surgery I did on him Thursday night he took about 3 times as much from Josh the Anesthesiologist to knock him the hell out. That much propofol would probably kill me.
I looked back though his records, out of curiosity, never had a clean tox screen in the last 15 years, though there was one in 2005 that only had weed and opiates, no meth. His care over the last 10 years at this facility alone had to have cost more than a million dollars.
In reply to Toebra:
I don't know how you guys keep treating the same people over and over. Your a better person than I am.
In reply to Wall-e: it's why I left nursing and the ER for the engineering department and locksmithing 13 years ago. I got to where I hated people and giving some of them the pillow treatment seemed pretty reasonable for the good of the world.
They are not all like that Wall-e.
One guy, Al the Korean War Vet, was freakin' great. I actually went and saw him at the house a few times when he got bad. He had a case with his medals in it, silver star with oak leaf cluster, which means he got it at least twice. He had a framed letter from Ike hanging on the wall. He was really something.
Just lost a guy last week that had a lot of people crying when I told them about it. Phil would have probably died 5 years ago if not for me. There was literally not a single person I spoke to that thought what I was going to try would work. If he would have lost the leg then, he would probably have died when he had a heart attack.
You don't remember the a-holes for long. It is sort of like golf. The shots you hit into the water or the trees you forget. The 250 yard fade you hit over a canyon and around an oak tree you remember forever.
It's funny. My ex wife got clipped for being a seeker at a few hospitals. I never saw it. He'll, I drove her. We always had a stash at the house that never seemed to go away, so I didn't think she was using, and she may well not be. But all those trips to the hospital for pain control, switching care systems, repeat doctor visits.....i have to wonder.
Wall-e wrote: In reply to Toebra: I don't know how you guys keep treating the same people over and over. Your a better person than I am.
+1. It took my best friend several trips to jail/rehab to get off heroin. Her family and 90% of our friends had completely given up on her.
She's been clean for 15 years now and totally has her E36 M3 together. Sadly, she's also a convicted felon. :/
And thank god (proverbially) for people who donate their time to help people with addiction, mental issues, etc. My shrink sees about a third of his patients at no charge, which I think is pretty freakin amazing.
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