Thank you for considering them! :)

In my experience, a few celebrity abusers and the doctors who enabled them and others seem responsible for today’s “opioid crisis.” Jerry Lewis pops too many Percodan, and those of us who need 10 of them over the recovery from a bad ear infection that’s gone on for months suddenly aren’t allowed to get them. Rush Limbaugh pops oxycontin, and suddenly no one’s allowed a few to get through dry socket after wisdom tooth extraction. I’ll be honest, I was terrified to have spine surgery, a few years ago (I did get adequate pain relief, and my doctor was all about putting patient’s needs first — as it turned out, I didn’t need much and was able to work from home 3 days after a cervical disc replacement and fusion.) I think MOST patients hate brain fog and would take LESS medication than prescribed, in order to avoid it. I know that my own kids certainly would. It was my daughter who had the dry socket. And we did have hydrocodone. She didn’t want to take it at all. I let her decide when — my first mistake! — to take the first dose. “It’s not so bad.” We rented some movies, sat down for an afternoon of watching them, and that’s about the time the pain kicked in. She took a painkiller, but it was too late. Pretty soon, the screaming started. I called the doctor and they assured me she wouldn’t OD on a second. “Listen to the pain, not the dosage.” They could HEAR it over the phone. Even then, I don’t think she finished off the first round of the prescription, despite dry socket. But it’s experiences like that that make me angry at the thought of government or “pain specialists” arbitrarily limiting access to EFFECTIVE pain meds when needed. Those who truly needed them, in the right dosages, didn’t cause the problem. We would always have preferred to get back to functional with tolerable levels of pain.