Baby Heroin

Apparently, opioid overdose killed about 42,000 people in 2016. That's a town of people.

If you go to Stanford Pain Management clinic, in one of their small, examining rooms, there is a letter on the wall, signed by the Surgeon General (a copy of course), asking the staff to help fight the "opioid crisis." There's another piece of paper on the wall, explaining that even patients with legitimate pain can become addicted to opioids (I read recently that 1 in 6 pain patients will become addicted), contrary to popular belief (although I never believed that).

"I don't think opioids are good, especially for chronic pain," the doctor tells me within the first few minutes of us meeting.

When he asked my history of pain medications, I mentioned that I was on MS Contin for a while.

"You got off of it by yourself?"

I nod.

"That's really good. That's a dangerous medication."

Morphine is one of the best medications we have. It eases suffering around the world.

I explain to multiple doctors that the pain has interfered with my studying, and my ability to attend lectures (most days, I only stop studying because the pain is too much for me to sit anymore, not because I'm sick of studying). I've missed a lot of class, due to the fact that I was hospitalized recently (for psychotic symptoms), and some mornings (and afternoons, for that matter), the pain becomes so great that I can't even walk across campus with my bag. Does the staff at Stanford Pain Management care? Maybe. The lead doctor (I can't tell if he's a resident or not) explains that the room was full of people in evaluating my case, including several researchers/professors.

"You're a complicated person," he continues, referring to the fact that I have schizoaffective disorder-bipolar type, and any medication that treats my pain will affect my emotional and mood state. He suggested one medication, a low-dose of naloxone (you cannot take that and opioids at the same time), but later realized after the conference, that it would possibly increase my auditory hallucinations (and also my nightmares). So, that idea was nixed. But he didn't have any other solutions, reassuring me that Cymbalta and gabapentin were the best at treating fibromyalgia, even though I haven't received much benefit from the Cymbalta.

He seemed rather confident that physical therapy would help (it will, and I'm not against the practice, as I told my mother over the phone, I would go to physical therapy once a week for the rest of my life, if it was required). Exercise is the one treatment that all doctors who see patients with fibromyalgia agree actually works. The doctor at Stanford Pain Management Clinic told me to consider myself an "athlete in training" and to exercise as such (from what I've read, your average athlete exercises 2 to 3 hours per day). He also, when pressed by my questioning, believes that losing weight will help my condition.

He was against the use of opioids, and said that the Norco should be used "sparingly." I believe that two pills per day qualifies, but he had a differing opinion on that.

While hospitalized at Stanford's G2P, I was able to get by on two Norco's per day because I had the ability to recline in bed with a large, hot water heating pad that was connected to a small motor. I could prop myself up, and then do my Microbiology homework. One particular day, the pain was steadily increasing, even though I had taken my two allotted pills, and the resident in charge of my case allowed me to take a Norco #10 in addition, which solved the problem.

I asked the doctor at the Stanford Pain Management Clinic if he felt the same about methadone as he did about Norco. He seemed a bit surprised and then horrified by the suggestion, telling me that methadone was more potent, and was even more addicting than Norco because it acted on additional, different types of pain receptors than Norco. Which, of course, made me want to try it more.

I find it interesting that detached doctors who are not experiencing pain can look at a person who is in pain, and tell them to needlessly suffer. We all know the risks of addiction, but the medicine has value in taking care of health. Seroquel has terrible side effects, most remarkably "metabolic syndrome" which includes high cholesterol and diabetes, but--and yet--we still use it in an alarming amount of patients, including in the elderly even though it increases their risk of "sudden death."

It wouldn't be so bad, but the issue of prescribing opioids has now turned political (medicine should be immune to politics), and doctors are influenced by the media, which highlights terrible cases of overdose and addiction, but rarely bothers to include that morphine and other strong opioids make a huge, positive difference in peoples' lives. If you learn a little history about morphine, you will find that backlash has happened before against this drug.

The controversy surrounding OxyContin and the misleading advertising campaign really fucked everything up for chronic pain patients.

(By the way, you can chop Seroquel up and snort it, and apparently, it puts you gently to sleep, and they call it "baby heroin")