OT Opioid abuse

Oct 31, 2018 2 Replies

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micky 7 years ago

OT Opioid abuse

I understand that many people were given opioids for pain, caused by illnesses, accidents, and surgery, and aiui a fairly high percentage of them became addicted and a fairly high percentage of those addicted have died or will die because of that.

But wasn't that when no one realized the risks of opioids?

Now that they know the risks and results, haven't doctorsy become much less wiling to prescribe them, and for shorter periods, and if not, why not? If so, are there still new people becoming addicted, or is this a problem which will mostly go away soon?

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Ed Pawlowski 7 years ago

Yes, I just saw something about that last week. Prescriptions have generally been cut in half or more and some are not even prescribed.

Many of the new addictions are voluntary recreational users.

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micky 7 years ago

I saw one "study" regarding iirc having doctors who actually already did prescribe a drug teach a class (to other doctors? maybe those who conveniently worked in the same hospital so it was easy to go to a 2PM class, compared to driving some place after work) about using specific drugs that drug companies were pushing, and either the doctors who participated or those who didn't, or both, thought the point was for one doctor to convince the other doctors. But the plan was actually to get the first doctor to use the drug more, because a) his trying to teach others would convince him even more, b) iirc he'd feel comraderie with the people from the drug company and that would cause him to prescribe more of it. IIRC, they paid him to teach the class but, partly because the money was small by most standards and certainly compared to what they earned as doctors, the money itself was not the incentive, more the praise which the money represented.

Similarly I suspect, taking doctors out to dinner, it's not the price of the meal, which they could afford on their own, it's the praise it represents.

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