Opioid deaths pass 70,000

powermad · Aug 15, 2018

Well Opioids are fairly new, most are probably not aware of the dangers it poses...

bolus · Aug 15, 2018

clearconscience said:
Its a nasty problem without a solution. People always seem to choose drugs over anything else in life. I'll never understand why.

Even if people knew they would die getting high, they would still do it.

It takes over the addiction part of your brain. It's the part that makes us crave food and feel hungry even though we may be weeks away from actually starving. Everything that you feel when you havent eaten in a day or so (hunger, irritability, headaches, etc) are all manifestations of the brain to force you to eat, not from starvation.

So when a drug takes over that part of the brain, their brain starts to think that, like food, the body will die without it.

so asking someone addicted to opiates to quit is like asking someone to never eat again. They may know logically they wont die, but their survival part of their brain is freaking out.

But opiates are much worse...

Imagine that after eating hamburgers daily for a month, you start to notice that you still feel quite hungry after eating one. So you eat two. A few weeks later two hamburgers does nothing and you feel like you are starving. Hunger pains are a lot worse, your head is pounding. So you eat 3, then 4. Every time it helps for a little while and then quits working.

Then you are up to 500 hamburgers for lunch. It does nothing to help the hunger pains. Your brain is screaming at you to eat or you will die. If you miss a meal you are shaking and sweating. Your hunger pains quadruple. You will happily eat as many hamburgers as you can even if it kills you.

Its amazing to see the brain manipulate us like this. I had a patient last week on high doses of morphine and oxycodone. She was also on a whole handful of sedating meds - Valium, 3 sleeping pills over max dose, 2 muscle relaxors and several others. She was exactly the type of patient who overdoses and dies. Her doc left town and she came to me for refills. I stopped everything that would not cause withdrawal and wrote tapering doses for the pain meds and valium (stopping high dose valium suddenly will cause seizures or death).

I made it abundantly clear I would not continue the combination of meds that she was on. If her doc had not left the state, I would have reported them to the state board of medicine for malpractice.

She did not taper. she used them all up even faster than before and came back saying "you need some compassion here" to get back on all her meds. She had no care at all when I said she would die from her meds. She was just angry I would not give them to her.

that guy · Aug 15, 2018

powermad said:
Well Opioids are fairly new, most are probably not aware of the dangers it poses...

Some of the new types are, but opioids - from opium poppy's - have been used for thousands of years

clearconscience · Aug 16, 2018

bolus said:
It takes over the addiction part of your brain. It's the part that makes us crave food and feel hungry even though we may be weeks away from actually starving. Everything that you feel when you havent eaten in a day or so (hunger, irritability, headaches, etc) are all manifestations of the brain to force you to eat, not from starvation.

So when a drug takes over that part of the brain, their brain starts to think that, like food, the body will die without it.

so asking someone addicted to opiates to quit is like asking someone to never eat again. They may know logically they wont die, but their survival part of their brain is freaking out.

But opiates are much worse...

Imagine that after eating hamburgers daily for a month, you start to notice that you still feel quite hungry after eating one. So you eat two. A few weeks later two hamburgers does nothing and you feel like you are starving. Hunger pains are a lot worse, your head is pounding. So you eat 3, then 4. Every time it helps for a little while and then quits working.

Then you are up to 500 hamburgers for lunch. It does nothing to help the hunger pains. Your brain is screaming at you to eat or you will die. If you miss a meal you are shaking and sweating. Your hunger pains quadruple. You will happily eat as many hamburgers as you can even if it kills you.

Its amazing to see the brain manipulate us like this. I had a patient last week on high doses of morphine and oxycodone. She was also on a whole handful of sedating meds - Valium, 3 sleeping pills over max dose, 2 muscle relaxors and several others. She was exactly the type of patient who overdoses and dies. Her doc left town and she came to me for refills. I stopped everything that would not cause withdrawal and wrote tapering doses for the pain meds and valium (stopping high dose valium suddenly will cause seizures or death).

I made it abundantly clear I would not continue the combination of meds that she was on. If her doc had not left the state, I would have reported them to the state board of medicine for malpractice.

She did not taper. she used them all up even faster than before and came back saying "you need some compassion here" to get back on all her meds. She had no care at all when I said she would die from her meds. She was just angry I would not give them to her.

So basically the zombies have come and there's only one way to end it?

Joking, but kinda not

FriendOfEvanWilliams · Aug 16, 2018

It really is an epidemic. Up until several years ago, while it was still a huge problem, it wasn't anywhere near the level it is now. Cheap, illicitly manufactured fentanyl from China is flooding our country through the good 'ol USPS. Now that dealers know they can make 3-4 times the profit on their product by lacing it with such a potent and cheap adulterant, they are starting to put it in everything. It's not just heroin users now; they are finding fentanyl in cocaine, meth, Ecstasy, pressed Xanax pills, and counterfeit prescription pharmaceuticals. Just look at Prince, he was taking what he thought were Vicodin (arguably the M&Ms of the opiate world) and it turned out they were counterfeit and loaded with enough fentanyl to tranquilize a horse. So now it's not just career junkies who are falling out and dying, it is people who just dabble in more recreational drugs on an infrequent basis. I have personally had 6 or 7 people I know die from opiate overdoses, and among some of my less-law abiding friends I hear that they have dead friends in the double digits.

The saddest part is that these are all very preventable deaths. In addition to the fact that if they hadn't chosen to do drugs they would be alive, there is now an easily accessible antidote to opiate overdoses that anybody can get and use for cheap or free. If there was less stigma around opiate addiction these people (remember, they are still somebody's son/daughter/mother/father) just maybe would be more willing to educate their loved ones on the use of Narcan and not do stupid sh!t like use alone where nobody will find them until they are a cold and lifeless corpse. Say what you will about drug users deserving to die, but do their children or loved ones deserve to have that image burned in to their memories for the rest of their lives?

Many people talk a lot of trash about drug users, not realizing that a huge number of people they know and care about are struggling with addiction, so scared to reach out and ask for help because of the stigma that you put on them.

Sorry for the wall of text, but this issue hits close to home for me and I don't want to see any more of my friends die alone when it could be easily prevented. I keep Narcan around at all times; I think of it the same way as my carry pistol: better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

For anybody here who has a friend or loved one who is susceptible to opiate overdose, or just wants to be prepared for an emergency, this website can help you find where you can pick some up for your first aid kit:

Find naloxone near you | stopoverdose.org