I had so many new “friends” and some old ones too that came up to me when they found out I had a prescription pad. Ugh, just ugh. If you are “lucky” enough to have a friend that can write, go see them professionally.It’s not the 80’s, and we can’t party like it 1999. It hasn’t been snowing for years now and trust me, it won’t snow up in here, ever.

 Let’s talk about the reasons you do not want any of the above, even though you think you do or maybe on them long term already. It is a common request of patients in practice,even more so than people with a cough asking for an antibiotic (oh yeah you are going to hear about that too, later though these drugs are killing people). It is a tough call for a provider who knows there is a much more difficult recovery period using therapies and anti-inflammatory medications than to simply give a patient opiates and send them home to rest and basically ignore healing. There I said it, opiates tend to do no more than ignore actual recovery and just freeze the pain time harder than Han Solo in carbonate or zonk the person so bad that even Jar Jar Binks is funny, And, let’s face it,people just don’t care. And you don’t have to either. You will get some funky healing without the strength that will make you worse in the long run. May be not now, just wait until you are older, stuff like this catches up to you. Your grandfather is grumpy for a reason in the morning and can feel weather changes in his back because of injuries left untreated.

 Nursing units get this all the time. A patient will literally have a timer set for exactly when they can have their next pain pill. I have even had patients tell me, “just bring it every 4 hours, I am going to ‘need it’.” In most states that is illegal and unethical because it is ordered as needed not every four hours and you have no idea where you are going to be in four hours pork chop, so when I hear this, I go back to the nurses’ station to vent about this behavior. Why you ask? First off, it is the assumption that you are just there to get high.You heard me get high. Also, quite honestly, it pisses us off. You do know that opioids, as well as other medications, have that potential if not needed?People think, well the doctor prescribed it, so it’s safe, right? Well, the doctor prescribed it AS NEEDED (PRN). When you don’t need it, all you are doing is getting high (to oversimplify things). This worries your nurse who has far more to do than just their nails at the desk all night. I can honestly never get mine quite right, and it bugs me that I am always drying my polish when a call light is pushed, am I right nurses? I have seen more patients than I care to try to slip away into the great wide open this way, and it is scary to reverse the effects (we can) and watch a patient go from near death to wide awake in severe pain. Reversal is in the form of a drug called Narcan or the generic Naloxone. Yeah, it’s in the news because it is used to reverse opiates in street drug overdoses as well (the dreaded h-word, Heroine. Making the connection yet?). Because, yes Karen your little habit has the potential to cause you to turn to drugs on the street. The addiction is the same, the drugs are not. There are some dire consequences to changing to street drugs, but pill addictions do just that.

 As a prescriber, I am always concerned when a person is discharged, we may give more opiates than they need. So, what happens? Many go home to squirrel these away for those random aches and pains, forgetting that they are an addictive form of medication. The worst thing is giving them to Karen, your neighbor, for her headaches. This is illegal and could be hurting Karen more than helping her(The Connors addressed this when they killed off Roseanne.). Another unwanted effect is guests in your home that steal these from your medicine chest and divert them on their own. Yeah, I learned about this one the hard way with a neighbor a few years ago. All bad. We contribute to the problem.

In all this, yes, they are helpful for the short term. What makes you better is healing and realistic medicating. If you can’t feel that new hip surgery, how do you know if you overdid it in therapy? In the long term, you thank us for pushing you to therapy and your own hard work doing the exercises (Yes as inane as they sometimes sound). Physical, occupational, and speech therapists know their jobs and following their lead will get you a lot further than just sitting around on your butt in a drug haze.

I know that sounds like no fun, but in the next installment, I will give some boring-assed CDC data that talks about how dangerous this can be, with my thoughts and quips from the humped editor. Good boy, now off to do something about your hump…!