Opioids lead to suicide

[woodchip]

Or should I be more precise by saying the lack of Opioids lead to suicide. Stating to read accts. of these suicides more and more. So I ask you, has the govt gone too far by outright banning them and charging and arresting doctors who prescribe them Yes I know some doctors over prescribed them but certainly not all of them. What do you suggest a person who suffers severe chronic pain do to ease the pain? Go to the streets and buy something? I would prefer to see a doctor handle the drug in a responsible manner and prescribe a pain regimen than having his patient suicide because the pain is too great or the patient gets himself something not legal.
Thoughts?

[Vander]

The goal should be harm reduction. Boost resources for addiction treatment, reduce profit motive. Nuke Purdue from orbit.

[Tunnelcat]

I'm with Vander on this one. Either nuke Purdue off the face of the earth or make them pay to clean up the gigantic mess they created all in the name of greed and almighty profit. No getting off with bankruptcy either. Time to take some personal responsibility and clean up their mess with all that ill-gained fortune that's probably sitting in some offshore bank accounts somewhere. This family and company marketed and produced a drug that has killed and sickened more people than this country can possibly ever count or hope to keep track of now and they did it with the full knowledge of the disaster they were creating. So the numbers of suicide victims resulting from intolerable pain now pale in comparison.

https://www.statnews.com/2019/01/15/mas ... w-details/

Oxycontin and Fentanyl cannot be taken by a lot of pain patients because it makes them violently sick. I myself number among those who cannot tolerate these drugs and I've rarely used them, so I'm screwed if I'm ever in intolerable pain. My mother, who was addicted to cigarettes and suffered from the pain caused by her spreading lung cancer, unintentionally overdosed on the more potent opioid Fentanyl, passed out during the night and almost drowned in her own vomit. She didn't realize how powerful this drug was either. The docs prescribed it to her as a safe to use drug, as per Purdue's own marketing literature. So getting these drugs legally to people more readily won't really solve the pain issue for those that need it. What it WILL do is to create even more addicts, or unintended deaths through overdoses, all from legal script.

Unfortunately, now that Purdue created this stuff and it's more powerful offspring, Fentanyl, the genie is already out of the bottle on the streets and it can be bought in far more lethal strengths than will ever be needed for pain. The street sources will never go away by making it easier to obtain legally either. If you think that's bad, how long before yet another new opioid called Dsuvia, which is 1000 times more potent than Fentanyl and was created by yet a different pharma company gets out on the streets, no matter how rigorous and restrictive the dispensing regimen they create? It'll still get out there eventually because someone will screw up, or do it on purpose because they're greedy. These idiot companies need to quit dealing with opioids all together and figure out a better way to deal with intransigent pain. They're only creating a growing monster from the best or worst of intentions that will keep on killing.

https://www.narconon-suncoast.org/blog/ ... y-fda.html

[woodchip]

TC, there are other areas to look at. One is the Peruvian Green tarantula venom which has very promising :

At the Biophysical Society's 60th Annual Meeting, being held in Los Angeles, Calif., Feb. 27-March 2, 2016, a group of researchers from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, will describe their efforts with ProTx-II, a peptide toxin found within the venom of the Peruvian green velvet tarantula, Thrixopelma pruriens. Its high potency and selectivity to inhibit the pain sensation receptor make it an ideal candidate as a future painkiller.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 082005.htm

Another pain killer is CBD oil though from my real life experience it doesn't do a lot for me. A guy I know has bad back pain and tried various over the counter drugs and I gave him some of my Tizanadine (muscle relaxant) and Tramadol (a very low dose opioid). Neither worked as well as a high dose CBD oil. So much so that he is willing to pay the 160.00 for the standard size bottle.

[vision]

Neither worked as well as a high dose CBD oil. So much so that he is willing to pay the 160.00 for the standard size bottle.

Very interesting! I hope one day we can create metabolomic profiles of people and find the best types of drugs for their unique physiology. That goes for anti-depressants as well as pain-killers.

I don't have any experience with pain meds other than my body rejects them, so if I ever wind up with a serious injury or chronic condition I'm pretty much screwed since all that's left is meditation.

Growing up, I had friends who used heroin. Four of them were addicts. Luckily, all of them were eventually able to get help and stay clean. However, a guy I was in a band with as a kid died a couple years ago from opioid abuse. It's a damn shame. I hope we can do better as a society.

[Tunnelcat]

TC, there are other areas to look at. One is the Peruvian Green tarantula venom which has very promising :

At the Biophysical Society's 60th Annual Meeting, being held in Los Angeles, Calif., Feb. 27-March 2, 2016, a group of researchers from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, will describe their efforts with ProTx-II, a peptide toxin found within the venom of the Peruvian green velvet tarantula, Thrixopelma pruriens. Its high potency and selectivity to inhibit the pain sensation receptor make it an ideal candidate as a future painkiller.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 082005.htm

Another pain killer is CBD oil though from my real life experience it doesn't do a lot for me. A guy I know has bad back pain and tried various over the counter drugs and I gave him some of my Tizanadine (muscle relaxant) and Tramadol (a very low dose opioid). Neither worked as well as a high dose CBD oil. So much so that he is willing to pay the 160.00 for the standard size bottle.

The venom is an interesting idea, but that article was 3 years ago and big pharma is still working with opioids like that's all that's out there. I hope it pans out, because as as well as me being intolerant of opioids, I'm also intolerant of CBD and THC. I tried CBD oil that also contained a very small amount of THC for sleep. After about three nights of getting progressively more and more nauseous within 4 hours after taking it, I finally put 2 and 2 together and realized that I was also intolerant of CBD and/or THC it contained. It's probably now a co-intolerance in my case since that's what my body seems to do when it doesn't like some substance or protein. It's for the same reason I can't eat eggs, iceberg lettuce, pineapple, garlic, sesame, soy and milk or even take penicillin and amoxicillin, an hyperactive immune system. So no joy there for me and now I'm really screwed if I develop a painful condition.

I'm even having issues with finding a blood pressure medication. Just about every ARB and ACE drug out there gives me bad day long headaches. Beta blockers give me muscle pain and a lack of energy. I may even be having issues on the diuretic I'm currently taking right now. I've developed nocturnal migraine headaches that have forced me to get up and take an Excedrin or 2 to deal with along with stiff muscles. The sleep disturbances are starting to get to me too. I've stopped taking some mineral supplements to see if that's the issue, so I'll wait it out for a little bit longer before giving up, but lower blood pressure is just not worth the damn headaches, even if it means cardiac arrest or stroke in my future. Plus I have osteoporosis. But it looks like I can't take any of their magic bisphosphonate drugs because my 2 lower front incisors are currently loose due to jaw bone degeneration and if a person has their teeth removed while taking these drugs, which have a half life of 3 years in the body by the way, their lower jaw will develop necrosis and won't heal.

Medical science just does not have good solutions to pain, or a bunch of other medical problems either for that matter. Plus, you talk about opiates leading to suicide, you also need to release that people having to deal with pain who can't find a solution for that pain can lead to suicide as well, opiates or no opiates. I know how they feel, because right now, dealing with these constant migraines, migraines that were supposed to go away after menopause and haven't, have almost pushed me to my limit of tolerance at times. The docs have no solutions for those either. You talk to any guy who's suffered from cluster headaches and he can vouch for me on that one.

[woodchip]

First off I said "lack" of opioids is leading to suicides. At any rate have you tried Acetaminophen + Tizanadine ? I have crohns and like you it will wake me up with acute stomach and back pain and I can be awake for 5 hrs. 2 Tylenol and one Tizanadine usually helps but I have to be careful as one can only have so many Tylenol a day.
Also you might try to contact people studying the venom and see if you can be part of their study. Long shot but who knows.
As to CBD oil there shouldn't be any thc in it. Also unless you have a trusted source you also may be getting pesticide from growers who are not growing organic hemp. If you need a source let me know.

[Tunnelcat]

First off I said "lack" of opioids is leading to suicides.

Yep, you did. Sorry. But what about all those people under the care of a doctor who accidentally, or intentionally, take too much? Doctors are still either a little sloppy or desperate to alleviate their patient's pain when prescribing this stuff. Sometimes people screw up or decide that more is better they're so desperate for pain relief. They end up like my mother with aspiration pneumonia, or worse if not caught quickly enough, having major brain damage due the oxygen deprivation during the episode. My grandmother also died of lung cancer. She was so doped up on morphine that she was hallucinating, speaking nonsense and seeing imaginary big spiders on the ceiling. No, I think opiates need to be eventually retired as a formal medicine or even as a drug of research. I think that a much better pain solution needs to be developed asap that doesn't create brain-damaged victims, dead patients from overdoses and addicts out of most of our nation's medical patients suffering from intractable pain. That's not including those who abuse the drug for fun or habit. And whatever they come up with, it shouldn't cost a king's ransom to use for treatment.

At any rate have you tried Acetaminophen + Tizanadine ? I have crohns and like you it will wake me up with acute stomach and back pain and I can be awake for 5 hrs. 2 Tylenol and one Tizanadine usually helps but I have to be careful as one can only have so many Tylenol a day.
Also you might try to contact people studying the venom and see if you can be part of their study. Long shot but who knows.
As to CBD oil there shouldn't be any thc in it. Also unless you have a trusted source you also may be getting pesticide from growers who are not growing organic hemp. If you need a source let me know.

Well, there was a very small amount listed in that first batch of CBD oil. Not enough to make me stoned, and I've been stoned before. I did try, again, a purer version of CBD oil without the THC or pesticides much later on, thinking that there might have been some contaminate that was the culprit. It still made me ill, so it's now one of those things I have to avoid or pay the consequences. As for the Acetaminophen, I take Excedrin without Aspirin. The combo of caffeine and Acetaminophen is the best thing I've found to kill my migraines, but I have to catch them early for it to work the best. That's not possible when they happen at night though. Like you indicated however, too much of the Acetaminophen is bad for the kidneys, so I try not to take more than 1000mg total in a day. Fortunately, 500mg is usually sufficient. Unfortunately, having taken it for so many years has already affected my kidney function slightly. The price I've paid to alleviate my headaches may be high, but there was no other alternative at all.

[Jeff250]

Like you indicated however, too much of the Acetaminophen is bad for the kidneys, so I try not to take more than 1000mg total in a day. Fortunately, 500mg is usually sufficient. Unfortunately, having taken it for so many years has already affected my kidney function slightly. The price I've paid to alleviate my headaches may be high, but there was no other alternative at all.

Do you mean bad for the liver? I've always heard that NSAIDs are bad for the kidneys, whereas Acetaminophen is bad for the liver.

[Tunnelcat]

Like you indicated however, too much of the Acetaminophen is bad for the kidneys, so I try not to take more than 1000mg total in a day. Fortunately, 500mg is usually sufficient. Unfortunately, having taken it for so many years has already affected my kidney function slightly. The price I've paid to alleviate my headaches may be high, but there was no other alternative at all.

Do you mean bad for the liver? I've always heard that NSAIDs are bad for the kidneys, whereas Acetaminophen is bad for the liver.

Yeah, I looked it up. You're right. For some reason I thought it impacted the kidneys. My liver function is also not up to par, which IS probably due to the Acetaminophen. Which means my kidney function must have been impacted by my many years of elevated blood pressure. Now I'm on hydrochorothiazide for that high blood pressure, which seems to be working so far. Just can't win for losing, because I can't take any of the other classes of BP meds like ARB's and ACE Inhibitors without getting headaches.