re: #43 Dave In Austin

I found the thread to be rather entertaining.

There are a whole lot of people reading him the riot act.

I don’t think I would have survived one hand surgery without Fentanyl after surgery and OxyContin for a couple weeks as needed, much less five.

Opiods aren’t the problem any more than any other potentially addictive drug. The relentless pursuit of profit by capitalism constantly pushing for overprescription of medications is, combined with lack of training for proper safe use by medical personnel.

When I broke my hand, Tramadol was a new drug, marketed as non-addictive (LOL). I was treated in a VA emergency room in Wichita overnight for that, and they pulled a prescription package out of an unlocked stand-up locker of the drug for me to take for pain after setting my broken bones.

They had no drug fact sheet for the drug to give me, so I wouldn’t take it. They could not answer questions about the drug because they didn’t know the answers.

So I waited until I got home to Oklahoma so I could get to the Internet and find out what was up with the drug.

As it turns out, Tramadol impairs liver function, slowing down the processing of other drugs. That means it is contraindicated for any barbiturate, particularly Phenobarbital (for which the therapeutic dose is very close to the lethal dose). Taking Tramadol would have killed me.

I had to suffer two days with no pain relief whatsoever until my wife could schlep me back to Wichita to get Darvocet (now banned for safety reasons).