Thread by @life_is_art___

“I’d be dead without opioids,” Garland says. Doctors aren’t just being more cautious now. They’re being irresponsible. We’ve reached a sad point in America when our animals are treated better than people.” @LelenaPeacock @JSG_54 @process_x @NitaGhei 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-so…

Dez: “The disruption in my pain tx resulted in a severe flareup of my illnesses which ended with organ failure, emergency surgery, & sepsis. By the time I was out of the hospital, I was being given my final taper & quickly developed infections within 12 hours of my final dose”.

Nita G: “this practice is driven by a false narrative that the recent epidemic of opioid-related deaths is caused by overprescription of opioids & that tapering will improve patient safety and quality of life. However, more and more, the practice is having the opposite effect.”

@AmerMedicalAssn: “the #AMA Journal of Ethics points out that nonconsensual dose ⬇️ for stable opioid therapy patients puts them at risk and is a misdirected attempt to ameliorate a social problem—the rise in deaths from opioid overdoses that isn’t caused by med therapies…”

“It’s like signing up for voluntary parole that you’ll have to pay for dearly,” Peacock says. “You’re drug tested. Sometimes you have pill counts. You’re not allowed to travel if they suddenly call you for a pill count. If you’re out with your family on vacation, that’s too bad.”

Facing the unbearable prospect of going cold turkey, Garland made endless calls to obtain a rx, even contacting an addx clinic. After explaining her situation, she was told, “You’re not a person w/addx. You’re a person with pain. We will lose our funding if we give you anything”.

Some link the problem to policy changes such as the ACA which, they believe, changed the tx model from care to prevention. Says Peacock:“Every doctor now has to be a parole officer or a cop. These are opposing principles, you cannot deny pts care & abide by the Hippocratic oath”.

Garland looked after an elderly mother and has a daughter in her 20s who is disabled. “The medicine allowed me to take care of my mother who had dementia. It helped me to straighten out her affairs and get her into hospice care. My daughter lives with me. I do her IV fluids..”

Opioids also allow her to do things most of us take for granted. “With pain medication I’m able to garden. I can prepare a meal, take care of my dogs. I have a grand baby now I can play with. Without the meds, I’d be inert, unable to do anything. It lets me have a normal life.”

Excellent article highlighting the effects of misguided policy based on the #LitigationNarrative resulting in #DEACenteredCare.

I must add that the idea of the “legitimate patient” was crafted by the DEA, and was adopted by the medical community to “weed out” ppl who used RXs in a way that the govt deemed wrong. It was baked in to the CSA as to avoid rxing for “comfort” aka ppl w/mental pain.

What we’ve found is what marginalized groups traditionally targeted by the drug-war have been trying to tell us: the DEA doesn’t *really* care about “legitimacy”, they care about expanding the criminalization of “addictive” substances.

The CDC and HHS deciding to wage war on RX opioids allowed the DEA to use that stigma to expand their reign of terror. Now b/c all long term use is presented as not evidence-based, the pts seen as “legitimate” are limited to the exceptions put forth by CDC. Cancer, SCD, hospice.

The damage is done, but allowing the feds to continue to make the rules/gls that dictate who gets what medical tx will only result in more suffering. We now know what happens when complicated medical issues become co-opted by politicians and malpractice attorneys. It has to stop.