Many doctors will just write a script for high quantities of anything the patient asks them for. That’s why pharmacies are trying to make sure it’s actually necessary. Unimaginable amounts of people die every year from opioid overdose and they’re not all bad people. It starts with being prescribed these pills for an acute condition and getting hooked. I understand that you who have chronic pain and truly need them but you will just have to go through extra steps. Not everything is about you.

heyatleastitsnotcancer:

Wow. You clearly have never had to take opioids and you’ve been buying the government’s bullshit on opioids as well. You’re lucky you’ve never had to take them long term but you clearly do not understand the process of getting opioids now. Doctors will not just write scripts for higher doses. They did like back in the 1990s and early 2000s when opioids became prescribed more but now most doctors avoid prescribing them because they risk their license if they’re suspected of over prescribing. Doctors go through an extensive system to prescribe them now and it’s not an easy process for them or the patient. It used to be but things have changed.

Currently doctors are lowering chronic pain patients pain medications because of misconceptions like yours rather than raising them as you’ve stated. They’re lowering doses that people have been on safely for years. This puts chronic pain patients in agony and bed bound. You want to talk about opioid deaths which are absolutely awful and we need better resources to help addicts. What about the chronic pain patients who are dying because their medications are taken away even though they use them responsibly. Without the meds and in agony they often end up killing themselves. Or forced to go buy opioids on the street and end up dying. They are punished for other people’s actions and end up dying. How is that okay? How is that justified in your mind?

Without pain meds, I would be bed bound and unable to work. But taking them responsibly like I have for the last 7 years, I can manage some quality of life. My doctors have deemed me safe to take these medications at the dosages they prescribed. What gives the government and pharmacy the right to decide differently without a medical degree or any understanding of me as a patient?

They aren’t adding “extra steps” to get prescriptions, they are intentionally lowering or withholding medications from people who need them. It’s not about waiting a little longer for them for chronic pain patients, it’s about fucking surviving. I’m treated as a criminal and a drug addict simply for taking the medication my doctor prescribed because people like you have a false understanding of prescribed opioid pain medication.

I hope you never have to experience the humiliation of being treated like scum simply for the medication you take. I hope you never have to lay in bed in agony crying and unable to sleep because the pharmacy is withholding your medication. I hope you never have to feel the fear of having to quit your job and live in poverty because you’re in too much pain to work. I hope maybe you’ll listen to what I said and rethink your attitude on chronic pain patients. This isn’t about me. It’s about the thousands of chronic pain patients being punished for other’s behavior.