Junkie kinda implies opiates, which is what I meant. Like how many people fall under the topic of this thread in particular. Seems to be one of those 2+2 discussions where we're talking about people like they aren't in the room.

There might be a few but I wouldn't think so. A main-lining junkie is likely not playing poker so why post on this site? And, yeah, junkie kinda implies opiates but is also a broad term.

Yep. I broke my arm (a few years ago) and when they set the bone it was very painful. They gave me a morphine drip at the hospital (this is in Toronto) and also gave me a prescription for opiods that I never filled. My arm hurt like hell for a few days but eventually I got better.

When I went back for periodic checkups I remember how confused the doctors were that I didn't just jump at the opportunity to take opiods for a few weeks. "Weren't you in pain?" "Well, yeah. Shouldn't a broken arm hurt? What's the big deal?" Mass confusion.

Anyway, when opiod addiction became front page news I wasn't really surprised given my own experience where what was really just moderate pain (from my perspective) was treated with opiods as a default.

Now you went the other way and got too stereotypical with the definition. There are opiate addicts all over the place, many functioning just fine in society. They're not all Renton.

no one plays poker anymore. I mean, I was a pro for 7 years and havent played a hand of poker in the last 5 or so.

regardless, the idea that junkies cant function and be productive members of society is bunk. so long as they get their fix, they avoid withdrawal and appear fine. so long as they have money they are fine.

yes, there is some difference between the mainliner and the pills guy, and the guy shooting h (which is really fentanyl nowadays) is gonna have much harder time retaining respectability due to the nature mainlining and some of the harsh side affects.

but theres a reason many of the pill poppers "graduate" to the h. one big reason is that pills are not always available due to the crackdown on scripts. as the wire showed, dope is always available and junkies will find it.

I would guess there are plenty of opiate addicts here and in your personal and professional life. statistically, its a lock.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...=.b64d4a277995

Just finished reading that article. It touches on everything that is wrong with our government. Congress working with pharmaceutical companies to defang the DEA. In fact the effort was led by the congressman Trump has selected as his hopeful appoint as Drug Czar.

Huge amounts of cash given to candidates to take away the DEA’s ability to shut down pharmaceutical companies and distributors from shipping products to suspicious sources.

Then we have dozens and dozens of DEA employees who left to join the cause of defending the drug companies and their distributors from the government.

It’s all very gross and the Obama administration didn’t seem to do much to oppose or publicize it while it just continues to get worse under the current administration.

I thought more clandestine methods were needed for those old internet pharmacies to get products but no the official distributors for the pharmaceutical companies were supplying them directly. Once the DEA shut down internet pharmacies everything just shifted to pain clinics, a huge number of which were in Florida. It’s been well documented how groups took busses and trips down to Florida to load up on pills in Florida then take them back North to resell them for a huge profit.

One story that sticks out in my mind is this dumb kid who won 500k in season 9 of Big Brother took pretty much all his winnings and invested it in buying OxyContin in Florida and bringing it back to the eastern seaboard. This was until he was arrested with an athletic sock packed full of pills hidden in his pants.

Pain clinics have been drastically limited now but the DEA has no ability to go after the drug suppliers. So they are forced to just go after individual doctors which is much less efficient and effective. It would be like if the drug cartels were 100% immune from transporting and selling their products so the only enforcement action was going after corner dealers.

I do appreciate Trump saying he was going to solve this problem as his appointment choice for Drug Czar is the congressperson who led the charge to create a law to protect the drug companies.

Welp, the fact that some of the players in my games are junkies of one sort or another certainly explains a lot!

60 minutes piece could not have been more infuriating.

Infuriating, but not even a little bit surprising.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-...-and-congress/

TBH, I thought that this aspect was overblown and that the commentariat were running w/ it in order to have something to talk about but, wow, just wow.

Tom Marino is a POS. Of course people in middle of nowhere PA don't know **** about their representatives so they just vote party line.

anyone who falls for the stupid MONEY DOESN'T AFFECT POLITICS derp should watch that 60 minutes piece, holy ****

Truth

If people want drugs, they can find them and there will always be someone willing to provide them and profit. Also, no law or police effort will ever make that untrue.

That's immaterial. Most Americans DESPISE addicts and don't mind seeing them have the book thrown at them.

but people do not want drugs until they are exposed to them. and these companies and doctors worked extremely hard to expose as many ppl as possible to opiates.

and even then, many people will still not want those opiate drugs unless they become addicted. and again, these companies and drs exposed the ppl to opiates in such a fashion that it massively increased their odds of addiction.

this is easy to see when you consider how many more opiate addicts that exist currently.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics...ily-oxycontin/

https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/too-many-pills/

Haven't listened yet but Reveal is a pretty great investigative show, in depth.

Show is about how big pharma was able to stop the gov from investigating and punishing them for the illegal and reckless practices that were creating record profit and addicts.

But.......

So not only did the pharma companies lobby and write the bill, they laundered support for it

https://theintercept.com/2017/10/22/...ent-advocates/

Savage:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...empire-of-pain

And nobody ever goes to prison.

Well, there's a doc in Reno probably going to prison pretty soon. But if you're referencing the suppliers of the actual pills, nah.

In the Reno case, it irritated me that they're making a scapegoat of the doc in question - I saw one of his "patients" a couple of weeks after he got locked up, and she had been written for something like 2000 percocet, 2000 valium and 4000 vicoden in a 6 month period - an insane amount which she was clearly selling rather than taking (as she wasn't dead) Who the **** in the pharmacies she was going to was filling these? And why aren't they in trouble?

MM MD

Exactly. It's infuriating.

I know this is an old post but...

Yes, but the reason Purdue were "forced" by the FDA to instruct doctors to dose q12h is that they misrepresented that they had a drug that was effective at 12 hour intervals, whereas for a large number of people it is ineffective. They also misrepresented to doctors that it is not addictive. That's why they had to pay a $650 million fine.

The correct response to doses not lasting long enough is to dose more often, not to ramp up a q12h dose. Purdue could not advise doctors to dose more often, but they had an obligation to tell doctors what they knew, that OxyContin is not effective for 12 hours for some patients and that another choice of medication might be appropriate.

This is dead wrong, BTW. Pain as a "5th symptom" started in the 2000s.