The Stoned Age

Trey Smith

Sales of the two most popular prescription painkillers in the United States have exploded in new parts of the country, an Associated Press analysis shows, worrying experts who say the push to relieve patients' suffering is spawning an addiction epidemic.

Drug Enforcement Administration figures show dramatic rises between 2000 and 2010 in the distribution of oxycodone, the key ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet and Percodan. Some places saw sales increase sixteenfold.

Meanwhile, the distribution of hydrocodone, the key ingredient in Vicodin, Norco and Lortab, is rising in Appalachia, the original epicenter of the U.S. painkiller epidemic, as well as in the Midwest.

The increases have coincided with a wave of overdose deaths, pharmacy robberies and other problems in New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Florida and other states. Opioid pain relievers, the category that includes oxycodone and hydrocodone, caused 14,800 overdose deaths in 2008 alone, and the death toll is rising, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

Across the U.S., pharmacies received and ultimately dispensed the equivalent of 69 tons of pure oxycodone and 42 tons of pure hydrocodone in 2010, the last year for which statistics are available. That's enough to give 40 5-mg Percocets and 24 5-mg Vicodins to every person in the United States.
~ from Analysis: High Prevalence of Painkiller Sales Turning America into Painkiller Nation via CBS News ~

For the last 15 years or so, I have been wracked with pain from Fibromyalgia. During this time, various doctors (and friends as well) keep trying to convince me that I should go on prescription painkillers. It will improve your life, they tell me. You'll be able to do more things and not suffer through the pain.

I'm not biting. While I understand that many folks mean well, I see too many drawbacks to becoming a legal drug addict. For all the wonders of modern painkillers, they have several nasty side effects (like compromising liver function) and they too often lead to addiction.

My grandfather (an Osteopath) taught me years ago that pain is the body's way of sending a message to the brain. That message often is to quit doing whatever it is that is causing the pain to occur or to make it worse. Painkillers block this important message and can lead people to do things they shouldn't be doing in the first place.

There are many times when I'm not doing much of anything, but the pain is there. On my worst days, I simply curl up in bed with a hot pad and moan a lot. Every now and then, I may take one or two doses of an over-the-counter painkiller, but I've really got to be hurting to go that far.

I do realize that there are individuals in much greater pain than I and prescribed pain relief may be the only way they can hope to function, even minimally. I also know that a lot people are babies when it comes to pain. If they feel just a tad off their A game, they think nothing of popping a few pills.

As this report underscores, however, too many people are getting addicted to this stuff and they can't seem to cope with life without it. And the pharmaceutical companies that push these drugs on doctors and their patients are laughing all the way to the bank as they amass great fortunes!

This last part is what galls me the most. These companies manufacture the need and then reap tremendous financial benefits by turning much of the American populace into pill popping zombies.