Monday, October 13, 2014

First they criminalized the poor, but I did nothing because it did not affect me. Then they criminalized they mentally handicapped, and those suffering from chronic pain...  That is where we are ladies and gentlemen.  A crossroads for whether we wish to rise up as proud Americans and allow science to once again solve our problems?  Or go the way of many of the worlds evil nation states, and criminalize behavior and mental health disease?!  What fifty years ago made lobotomy a common term!


An insider peek at what happens when politics dictate, and I'm not even talking Obama-care!
Two plus two may equal four, but what happens if the number four stands for the devil or something altogether popularly inherently evil?  Well, then two plus two equals three, and many cars run out of fuel on the highway!  Nevertheless, as much as we all love analogies in journalism, let’s talk about a serious issue affecting countless American’s on the edge of an issue destroying our civilization.
D. Erik Emison
9/6/2012
 Come to Florida and you can walk into a pain clinic anywhere and get as much Oxycodone as your addicted heart and mind can bear!  Or at least that is what the popular media would have you believe, right?
I have called the state of Florida home for just over two years now after having moved from the conservative and Republican Congressional District that is House Speaker's John Boehner’s.  And why we do not mock this man for his name more publicly and in our news evades me, but digress I must not.  In many ways Florida shares its scenery with Ohio.  There are farms, both produce and cattle.  We had that in Ohio.  There are small towns, we also had those in Ohio.  And we have disabled and elderly persons here.  But one problem they have here that they do not have so much back in Ohio is the ability to be treated for Chronic Non-Malignant Pain (that is, pain that does not stem from cancer and is fatal).  I had never before heard the term “Pill Mill” until I moved to Florida, and for some, even the definition is as variable as the political environment.  It would seem that the true definition is something along the lines of, illegal activities within the medical community to divert controlled substances onto the black market.  But now loosely can mean any Doctor or any healthcare provider that prescribes “too many controlled prescriptions”.  Obviously, “too many” is a very arguable and loose to define, and it is defined exactly that way.  So lets first talk about what can be “too much”?  Narcotics when used long term for the relief of pain (like they have been for thousands of years) become more and more tolerated by the individual the longer they are taken, so in effect if a person has required their use for a decade, they will be substantially more medication dosage, than somebody who has just gone to the dentist and prescribed a pain medication for only a week.  “How in the world do people drive while taking that?”  Well its very easy, what feels like five milligrams of drug X to you, also feels the same as fifty milligrams of the same drug to somebody who has been on it for several years and their doctor has titrated, or increased little by little over time, the dosage, so that its effectiveness can remain the same.  They are not, as many would have you believe, taking insane amounts of drugs that cause them not to cognitively function.


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