I’ve wondered about that. I was given a single Percocet when I had a bone graft done, and I swear it was a placebo. No drowsiness, no pain relief, nothing except an upset stomach, and not able to take anything else until hours later. I did much better on the acetaminophen I took afterwards.
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Acetaminophen does precisely fuck all for me. I’d liken it to a placebo, but placebos don’t cause damage to your liver.
I do wonder sometimes if I have broken opioid receptors. I’m not a ginger, like @nothingfuture, but I have other known mutations (one wisdom tooth, eye color not matching anyone on either side of the family, ditto for hair color). Had a shot of morphine once, and it resulted in very little change in my pain level, nausea along the lines of motion sickness, then quite a bit of puking a few hours later.
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Pain is complicated and a bit of a fascination of mine.
Pain has two aspects to it:
The trigger for the pain being detected by the nervous system and that information transmitting up to your brain
and
Then the experience of that pain
The experience of pain is where you can really change things.
For example, people can endure pain if they think that it’s for a good purpose.
I got into this when I was in my third trimester of pregnancy, for obvious reasons. Having a baby is one of those things where, yep, pain, but also, so much joy. Going through that pain is really different from, say, getting your leg run over by a bus, even though maybe on the felt pain they are both a 10.
There’s a lot of things you can do to modulate your sense of pain.
I’ve also known a few people with chronic pain, and that really interests me. I have one high school classmate who had a rare side effect from a bad needle stick that has left him in wretched pain all the time. Every so often he posts on Facebook about his bad days. They sound horrible.
https://www.amazon.com/Pain-Nobody-Paul-W-Brand/dp/0310616786
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This is the syndrome my classmate has.
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I don’t think anyone would argue with that. My point is that even if they’re prescribed responsibly, there’s always some risk of addiction, and that risk is greatly increased if your society is organized in such a way that most people are leading lives of quiet desperation.
Been there. I went to an ER twice, uninsured, with gallstone attacks because the pain was so unbearable that it was worth the expense just to make it stop.
It’s fixed now.
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I believe I have a general allergy to opoids, but I know for sure I’m allergic to derivatives. I can’t even take Tylenol 3 because of codeine.
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Especially when we don’t do so for alcohol, nicotine, or soft drinks (which I swear are just as addictive, and the sugary kind are probably just as unhealthful).
This is what gets me. In some ways I think it’s sort of up to the addicted person to get help (or people around them) to solve their problem, rather than making it harder for those with legitimate health issues to deal with their pain. Putting all these legal barriers in the way annoys me.
But I’m not unbiased. I can’t take ibuprofen due to Crohn’s disease because it ironically causes inflammation. Acetaminophen doesn’t do anything for me. So if I have pain from the Crohn’s or the related arthritis I use Vicodin. It’s a little overkill but it works. Somehow I manage to use it only once in a while; my previous prescription lasted 9 months.
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I’m nitpicking, but: this framing is a major part of the problem.
Addiction is a legitimate health issue.
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Agreed. This is a case where the two health problems are in opposition, and answers are difficult.
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Especially with the crap health system we have in the US.
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