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    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Opioid Overdose Crisis

    Opioid Overdose Crisis

    Revised February 2018

    Every day, more than 115 Americans die after overdosing on opioids.1 The misuse of and addiction to opioids—including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl—is a serious national crisis that affects public health as well as social and economic welfare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the total "economic burden" of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement.2
    How did this happen?

    In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers, and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates. This subsequently led to widespread diversion and misuse of these medications before it became clear that these medications could indeed be highly addictive.3,4 Opioid overdose rates began to increase. In 2015, more than 33,000 Americans died as a result of an opioid overdose, including prescription opioids, heroin, and illicitly manufactured fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.1 That same year, an estimated 2 million people in the United States suffered from substance use disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers, and 591,000 suffered from a heroin use disorder (not mutually exclusive).5 Here is what we know about the opioid crisis:

    Roughly 21 to 29 percent of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them.6
    Between 8 and 12 percent develop an opioid use disorder.7–9
    An estimated 4 to 6 percent who misuse prescription opioids transition to heroin.7–9
    About 80 percent of people who use heroin first misused prescription opioids.7

    This issue has become a public health crisis with devastating consequences including increases in opioid misuse and related overdoses, as well as the rising incidence of neonatal abstinence syndrome due to opioid use and misuse during pregnancy. The increase in injection drug use has also contributed to the spread of infectious diseases including HIV and hepatitis C. As seen throughout the history of medicine, science can be an important part of the solution in resolving such a public health crisis
    .
    What are HHS and NIH doing about it?

    In response to the opioid crisis, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is focusing its efforts on five major priorities:

    improving access to treatment and recovery services
    promoting use of overdose-reversing drugs
    strengthening our understanding of the epidemic through better public health surveillance
    providing support for cutting-edge research on pain and addiction
    advancing better practices for pain management

    The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a component of HHS, is the nation's leading medical research agency helping solve the opioid crisis via discovering new and better ways to prevent opioid misuse, treat opioid use disorders, and manage pain. To accelerate progress, NIH is exploring formal partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and academic research centers to develop:

    safe, effective, non-addictive strategies to manage chronic pain
    new, innovative medications and technologies to treat opioid use disorders
    improved overdose prevention and reversal interventions to save lives and support recovery

    In a plenary address during the National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit in April 2017, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins describes the NIH opioid research initiative headed up by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). In a May 2017 New England Journal of Medicine special report, NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow and Dr. Collins outline how science can provide solutions to the opioid crisis and as they offer a 3 pronged strategy for research partnerships.

    https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abus...verdose-crisis
    Last edited by Judy; 03-01-2018 at 11:03 AM.
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    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    These are Americans who need our help. They trusted the medical professionals pushing these medications who obviously weren't educated or trained to a sufficient degree to realize they were pushing pills that for many of their patients would become a death sentence. Oh sure, blame the pharma companies, too, who lied to them, but these medical professionals, a word I use lightly, because most of them were nurses, specifically RN's who think they're doctors or should be, but aren't. They call the doctor and based on their input the doctor approves the prescription.

    Any medical professional at any level who doesn't know that an opioid derivative is addictive needs to resign and go work in a factory. No, forget that, you wouldn't want them in a factory either.

    Once you are addicted, your life is ruined. It will never be normal. You will always crave the drug for the rest of your life. Rehab is possible, but it will take many attempts and a devotion that many find extremely difficult, and for far too many, too hard.

    This is a great tragedy in our country, inexcusable. Every institution and expert we have whose job it was to prevent such a disaster, failed these patients for the past 20 years, until a man ran for President and talked to some people in New Hampshire who told him about it, who then went on the road and talked about it at virtually every campaign rally he had, because he understood the tragedy of addiction, from his brother who died of alcoholism.

    That man became President of the United States.

    Will he solve it, can he fix it, can he stop it? If anyone can, he can, and if anyone would, he would, so if he can, he will.
    Last edited by Judy; 03-01-2018 at 11:23 AM.
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    Wow!

    Why didn't they "Just Say No!"?

  4. #4
    Moderator Beezer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Boomslang View Post
    Wow!

    Why didn't they "Just Say No!"?

    EXACTLY...AND THESE PEOPLE POPPING THESE PILLS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE.

    MANY GO TO DIFFERENT DOCTOR'S TO GET MORE PILLS TO SCAM THE SYSTEM.

    MANY DO GET THESE PILLS AND DO NOT TAKE THEM ALL LIKE CANDY!

    NO SYMPATHY FROM ME...AND NOT ONE TAXPAYER DIME TO PAY FOR THEIR REHAB!

    MIND OVER MATTER...THEY WANT TO GET OFF THESE PILLS THEY CAN. THEY NEED TO STOP IT THEMSELVES!

    GOOD GRIEF...STOP THROWING OUR MONEY AT THESE PROBLEMS.

    THEY FAILED THEMSELVES!
    ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE "BROKEN" OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

    DO NOT REWARD THEM - DEPORT THEM ALL

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    Quote Originally Posted by Beezer View Post
    EXACTLY...AND THESE PEOPLE POPPING THESE PILLS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE.

    MANY GO TO DIFFERENT DOCTOR'S TO GET MORE PILLS TO SCAM THE SYSTEM.

    MANY DO GET THESE PILLS AND DO NOT TAKE THEM ALL LIKE CANDY!

    NO SYMPATHY FROM ME...AND NOT ONE TAXPAYER DIME TO PAY FOR THEIR REHAB!

    MIND OVER MATTER...THEY WANT TO GET OFF THESE PILLS THEY CAN. THEY NEED TO STOP IT THEMSELVES!

    GOOD GRIEF...STOP THROWING OUR MONEY AT THESE PROBLEMS.

    THEY FAILED THEMSELVES!
    Beezer, you are hard core!
    I like that about you!

  6. #6
    Moderator Beezer's Avatar
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    TOUGH LOVE BABY...TOUGH LOVE!!!

    THEY DIDN'T CALL ME THE "DRAGON LADY" IN THE MILTARY FOR NOTHING
    ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE "BROKEN" OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

    DO NOT REWARD THEM - DEPORT THEM ALL

  7. #7
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Boomslang View Post
    Wow!

    Why didn't they "Just Say No!"?
    They didn't know. They were sick and in pain at the hospital.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Beezer View Post
    EXACTLY...AND THESE PEOPLE POPPING THESE PILLS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE.

    MANY GO TO DIFFERENT DOCTOR'S TO GET MORE PILLS TO SCAM THE SYSTEM.

    MANY DO GET THESE PILLS AND DO NOT TAKE THEM ALL LIKE CANDY!

    NO SYMPATHY FROM ME...AND NOT ONE TAXPAYER DIME TO PAY FOR THEIR REHAB!

    MIND OVER MATTER...THEY WANT TO GET OFF THESE PILLS THEY CAN. THEY NEED TO STOP IT THEMSELVES!

    GOOD GRIEF...STOP THROWING OUR MONEY AT THESE PROBLEMS.

    THEY FAILED THEMSELVES!
    Quote Originally Posted by Judy View Post
    They didn't know. They were sick and in pain at the hospital.
    About 10 years ago, I was injured on the job. I was a law enforcement officer so getting into scuffles with scofflaws was an everyday event.
    The doctors gave me maximum strength Oxycodone. To this day, I think that's the best stuff on earth. I began to notice my body "calling" for it. I flushed the unused ones. I know how easy it is to get addicted and I had the common sense to see that I needed to stop. And I flushed them just to make sure.

  9. #9
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    I'm so glad you recognized it in time. It is very hard to beat this addiction, the drug is actually controlling your body. Very dangerous stuff peddled like Tylenol by the medical community.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Judy View Post
    I'm so glad you recognized it in time. It is very hard to beat this addiction, the drug is actually controlling your body. Very dangerous stuff peddled like Tylenol by the medical community.
    For me, to be honest, I liked the feeling. But inside it felt like something was "forcing" me to take them. One of my
    strongest personality traits/flaws is that I like to be in control of myself.
    I don't drink alcohol for the same reason.

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