Restricting Opioids Doesn’t Prevent Addiction. It Just Harms People Who Need Them

harm reduction, Non-Fiction, opioid epidemic, prescription opioids, , 4 Comments

for Healthline

The first time I walked into the cafeteria of the inpatient treatment center where I was to spend the next month, a group of men in their 50s took one look at me, turned to each other, and said in unison, “Oxy.”

I was 23 at the time. It was a safe bet that anyone under the age of 40 in treatment was there, at least in part, for misusing OxyContin. While I was there for good old-fashioned alcoholism, I soon understood why they’d made that assumption.

It was January 2008. That year, doctors in the United States would write a total of 237,860,213 opioid prescriptions at a rate of 78.2 per 100 people.

The driving force behind those numbers was Purdue Pharma, the makers of the highly addictive opioid OxyContin, the brand name of oxycodone. The company spent billions of dollars to market the drug without telling the full story, capitalizing on doctors’ fear that they were undertreating pain. (continued)

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Katie MacBride is a freelance journalist, essayist, and co-founder/associate editor of Anxy magazine. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Vice, Playboy, and Buzzfeed, among other publications. Follow her on Twitter: @msmacb

4 thoughts on “Restricting Opioids Doesn’t Prevent Addiction. It Just Harms People Who Need Them”

      1. Katie, I had to move from the Nor Cal Kaiser region, and lost my doctor of twenty five years. The new doctor informed me she could not ‘ethically’ prescribe, ‘Norco 10-325’, a pain medication I’d been on since 1998. What’s followed has been a nightmare. I’ve cannot answer another, “Describe your pain on a scale of one to ten”, I want grab them by the neck and shake them. I’ve been through so many ‘pain management’ classes, I could teach one. I have a hunch that many of those using the word, ‘pain’ don’t understand what it means. Feeling frustrated.

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      2. I’m so sorry Arne. That’s fucking awful and, IMO, violates the Hippocratic oath.

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