US life expectancy drops due to opiod crisis for second year in a row - Sensationalist Headlines

[quote]Life expectancy in the US has declined for the second year in a row as the opioid crisis continues to ravage the nation. It is the first time in half a century that there have been two consecutive years of declining life expectancy. [B]Drug overdoses killed 63,600 Americans in 2016, an increase of 21% over the previous year[/B], researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics found. Americans can now[B] expect to live 78.6 years, a decrease of 0.1 years. The US last experienced two years’ decline in a row in 1963[/B], during the height of the tobacco epidemic and amid a wave of flu. “We do occasionally see a one-year dip, even that doesn’t happen that often, but two years in a row is quite striking,” said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch with the National Center for Health Statistics. “And the key driver of that is the increase in drug overdose mortality.”[/quote] [url]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/21/us-life-expectancy-down-for-second-year-in-a-row-amid-opioid-crisis[/url]

Opioid usage is pretty bad here too in Australia. Next Feb they are getting more restrictions so I can only wonder what that'll do

Has the government even [I]talked[/I] about this?

[QUOTE=IKTM;52998213]Has the government even [I]talked[/I] about this?[/QUOTE] Lots of politicians have talked about it (especially during the election) and a few failed bills have been thrown around, along with the trump administration declaring it a public health crisis a few months ago which gave the executive agencies a few extra powers. Even the "repeal and replace obamacare" bill came with $45B in it to address the crisis, although since then I don't know of anything concrete that's been attempted.

This is literally why we need safer alternatives legalized

I met an American when I was travelling. She was from a rural community that specialized in mining. When the mining operations shut down, suddenly everyone were without jobs. The people that had money moved away, and many of those that couldn't move resorted to drugs. The things she talked about were seriously perspective altering. It's one thing reading about it on the papers and another when hearing about it from a first hand victim. Everything was just so damn tragic, her whole family were addicts, they were uninsured, the town voted for Trump in the belief that he'd bring back the mining jobs, one of her friends recently OD before I saw her. There was basically zero hope left in that place.

[QUOTE=IKTM;52998213]Has the government even [I]talked[/I] about this?[/QUOTE] Not really. It basically just amounts to "There's an issue. Wat do?" The opiod epidemic is a multi-faceted issue ranging from prescribers, to pharmacies, to the environment the addicts are in. Most of the troublesome opiods are already schedule IIs (30 day supply, no refills, need to present ID for pick up, stringent requirements for the script). The problem is, a 30 day supply could easily be 120 pills. Which isn't an issue if the patient getting them has cancer or some chronic condition and is needing that much medication. The problem stems from doctors writing scripts for opiods for...Just about anything. Had some dental work? Here's a 10 day supply that's 30 pills. Oklahoma has a database that tracks prescriptions filled for controlled prescriptions (opiod pain meds, sedatives, and stimulants, mostly). It lists what medication, which doctor prescribed it, what pharmacy filled it, and when this happened. Overall, it's a fantastic tool to suss out people who might be abusing....If it was consistently used. It's supposed to be used every time a controlled medication is filled. Yeeaaaaah...It doesn't. When it's 5pm, you've got 6 people waiting on medication to be filled, and corporate requires those waiters to be processed, filled (state law requires controlled medication to be double counted; it's a [B]bitch[/B] when someone has a 120 pill script 'cause it's done by hand), and sold within a certain amount of time after being entered in the system? You have to shave off time somewhere. A vast chunk of addicts end up getting their opiods from family members or friends. That 10 day supply of 30 pills I mentioned above? Most of the time, people aren't going to use more then two or three days which then get shoved into the back of the medicine cabinet....And then there's the American mentality that if someone gets addicted, that it's their own damn fault because they're "weak willed" or whatever BS. I mean, addiction clinics exist, but they're not cheap, and neither is the medication that goes with it. I wish there was a simple fix, but if there was, there wouldn't be an epidemic.

[QUOTE=J!NX;52998246]This is literally why we need safer alternatives legalized[/QUOTE] Heroin/fentanyl are a huge cause of overdoses/deaths as the article points out, physicians over prescribing and handing out legal painkillers like candy is also a major problem. What alternatives are there for people with severe pain? medical marijuana isn't a catch-all safe pain medication, its for mild pain at best.

My mom has been taking Oxy's for years now cause she has severe pain, she got surgery to correct it but I think she waited too long cause it did practically nothing to help. I'd like for for her to get off them but she'd be a complete wreck without them.

This is why there was such a huge outcry when the DEA attempted to schedule Kratom for no legitimate reason. After being introduced to it myself, it's had a hugely positive influence on my life and as a result, others as well: My friend's girlfriend Monica was addicted to otc pharmas, mainly percocet and on average, was downing 50+ mg of the stuff a day, which means she was taking 3,250mg of acetaminophen as well. She had nerve damage and along with the reliance on percocet, dropped out of school, had to stop working, and was living off of disability. I offered her a dose of Kratom, and within a month she'd completely stopped taking the percs, and within another month after that had headed back to school, and was soon working again, with small doses of Kratom throughout the day being all she needed. Just a week ago I was sitting in a diner with a coworker before a sales meeting with a customer, and he was complaining of back pain. He's an older guy, he's had this pain for years and refuses to take the opiates he once did because after 6 months of using them he was destroying his liver. I immediately brought up Kratom, and he lit up like a christmas tree since he'd just watched a video on VICE about it literally 2 days prior. I gave him a small dose, and after our meeting told me his back pain had diminished greatly, his knees no longer hurt, and his foot pain was gone as well. The next day he went to the shop I suggested and stocked up, and with my recommendation of a slightly higher dosage, his back pain was gone too. He's thanked me numerous times since, stating it's a life changer for him and hopes the government doesn't try and ruin such a wonderful thing for people. Just goes to show how fucked our medical and pharmaceutical industries are, and how strong big pharma's influence on the government really is. [editline]23rd December 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Richardroth;52998554]My mom has been taking Oxy's for years now cause she has severe pain, she got surgery to correct it but I think she waited too long cause it did practically nothing to help. I'd like for for her to get off them but she'd be a complete wreck without them.[/QUOTE] Kratom. Seriously.

[QUOTE=SpaceGhost;52998464]Heroin/fentanyl are a huge cause of overdoses/deaths as the article points out, physicians over prescribing and handing out legal painkillers like candy is also a major problem. What alternatives are there for people with severe pain? medical marijuana isn't a catch-all safe pain medication, its for mild pain at best.[/QUOTE] From what I hear, Kratom is good for getting you off the shit.

[QUOTE=IKTM;52998213]Has the government even [I]talked[/I] about this?[/QUOTE] Some state governments have. My home state of New Jersey broadcasts a bunch of commercials like these almost every hour: [video=youtube;UeRYMzl5RYg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeRYMzl5RYg[/video]

Opioid addiction is a terrible thing. My brother was addicted to Heroin. Unfortunately he didn't make it out. He was 25. Before he took drugs he graduated high school with a 3.8 and was doing well at one of our best universities. But it all went into the trash when he started taking pain pills, he ended up stealing a lot of our stuff, pain pills turned into black tar. It was a fucked up thing. He seemed like he was doing well when he went to jail, got clean, etc. But his girlfriend was also his dealer and after she hit him up he was back at it again. Never gonna forget the moment she called my mom saying he was dead, we didn't believe it, but then we got a knock on our door and it was the police. My mom just collapsed into tears. TL;DR Drugs are whack yo.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;52999287]Some state governments have. My home state of New Jersey broadcasts a bunch of commercials like these almost every hour: [video=youtube;UeRYMzl5RYg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeRYMzl5RYg[/video][/QUOTE] I want to voice my experience in working for a non-profit rehab facility and I have to say they are still super under funded. I was one of the few treatment associates with a bachelors degree and they basically couldn't afford to hire me full time or anyone else for $12 an hour. Maybe I worked at a shitty one, but this one had adults and kids (we were responsible for the teens 13-19 years old) and it felt like a softcore prison at times. The counselors were underpaid and unprofessional as this strange clique thing started to develop which divided the counselors and the treatment associates and basically tried to blame us for all the problems and take responsibility for all the wins. While the work I was doing was extremely rewarding (That feeling when you see a kid change whether it be not rejoining a gang, stop using H or xanax, stop peddling garbage, taking care of their kid they had when they were 15, it was huge and I will never forget those individuals who made their stay at the rehab mean something), the poor pay and breaking down of the facility drove me to change careers. It sucks because I felt like forces much bigger than me held us back from making a bigger difference and honestly at times it turned into a revolving door at times where the same people came back months later. The biggest takeaway I got from my experience is that people need more outpatient help. Yes it can be more expensive, but you need to teach people new skills they can use on the outside world to distract them from using. Some people can't find jobs after being locked up for drugs and when they struggle to find work, live in a community where no one looks after another, and their dealer is in the same low income housing complex as them, they are going to use again. So many of the kids I worked with were trapped in the spiral, and honestly I was at a loss of how to explain that the odds are against them because of something out of their control most of the time.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;53000358]That and how easy it is to screw the system. I've run into situations where i've been chewed out by a supervisor for NOT treating pain, when I didn't think the person was in severe enough pain to warrant an opiod. People can file suit against you for "not managing their pain", they might be completely fine, no blood pressure problems, no obvious injury, no obvious pain, but yea, they're in a 10/10 pain. No. Fuck you. That's not a 10/10 pain, don't bullshit me. And yet, if we're going to say "no, you're not in severe enough pain to warrant morphine/fentanyl/ketamine", then we have to fill out DOZENS of pages to say "nah this dude wasn't in enough pain". Give power back to the providers, let us tell people to fuck off over that dumb shit, don't make me fill out 8 million pages of paperwork to say "yes, in my professional opinion, according to this section of protocol, this person doesn't need meds". I'm licensed, I've proven that i'm competent, stop making me ask for permission to NOT give drugs. Hell, even in the ER i've had to watch doctors call up to admin and say "yo we're not giving this guy drugs cause he's bullshitting us", just so that when that person comes back with a lawyer, the administration can have a case. THIS SHOULDN'T BE A THING.[/QUOTE] ^This so much. It's frustrating because we're also taught "pain is very subjective. What might be a 5/10 for one person is an 8/10 for someone else". So, using a 1-10 scale is almost useless, and instead we're given this list of questions to ask in order to determine pain level. So, it becomes this fine balancing act of dispensing medications to those who need it, but not enabling abusers...Which can be very had at times when you've got someone with a chronic pain condition who's become opiod tolerant. 'Course, I'm also preaching to the choir, but I've also found that a lot of non-medical people don't really understand what goes on behind the closed doors. Interesting little nugget for non-medical people: there's technically no upwards limit of opiod doses. It's limited by what it's mixed with (usually acetaminophen which is 3-4 grams per day depending on literature). Long term users of opiods start becoming resistant to the effects and so the dose has to be slowly increased. Which is why some people can have stupidly high doses of the pure opiod medications like morphine. It's also why it's so easy to overdose. There isn't any negative effects until the person takes so much that they stop breathing. That's why fentanyl is so dangerous. It's dosed in micrograms, opposed to miligrams and is in a transdermal patch (25 mcg, 50 mcg, and I think 100 mcg). For non-metric users, 1 miligram = 1000 micrograms. So, people will cut the patch open, get all the fentanyl at once aaaaand OD themselves. Fentanyl is so stupidly potent and there's actually another drug that's even more potent called Sufentanil.

[QUOTE=IKTM;52998213]Has the government even [I]talked[/I] about this?[/QUOTE] Kellyanne Conaway is on the job so you know exactly how serious Trump takes this issue

Why did they drop it .1years? I never met an addict who had heroin addictions that would even remotely expect the age of 78 years. I have seen a lot of my friends die off due to heroin before 30. Is there any medical attribute for this, or is it just some average that is being dropped down due to more OD's by younger people?

[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;53000722]Why did they drop it .1years? I never met an addict who had heroin addictions that would even remotely expect the age of 78 years. I have seen a lot of my friends die off due to heroin before 30. Is there any medical attribute for this, or is it just some average that is being dropped down due to more OD's by younger people?[/QUOTE] The latter

[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;53000722]Why did they drop it .1years? I never met an addict who had heroin addictions that would even remotely expect the age of 78 years. I have seen a lot of my friends die off due to heroin before 30. Is there any medical attribute for this, or is it just some average that is being dropped down due to more OD's by younger people?[/QUOTE] Life expectancy is the average lifespan of all Americans. Since there's a huge number of deaths at a young age due to overdosing, it causes the average to drop.

We got a huge opiod epidemic here in Southern Indiana. I've seen so many families torn apart from it. The best our community can do is have the police bust the labs, but they just keep popping up. At the same time it seems our state has barely done anything with helping these people rehabilitate, and seem content with either ignoring the problem or throwing as many addicts in jail as possible.

Busting labs isn't going to fix the problem. It's simply a matter of supply & demand ( main reason why the war on drugs was a failure from the beginning). Bust one lab and another one will pop up. You can only fix the problem at the core: by decreasing the demand for opioids. Perhaps US doctors shouldn't be handing out pills like candy so people don't get hooked on fentanyl after their recipe expires.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;53005653]Then maybe our patients should actually grow a pain tolerance,[/QUOTE] Can't express how much of an idiot you sound right now.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;53005653]Then maybe our patients should actually grow a pain tolerance[/QUOTE] You might want to look up how chronic pain actually works, and how systems for managing it work. When people do manage to "grow a pain tolerance", this effectively deadens their perception of absolutely everything.

My best friend was on heroin for a year. He's over it now, and that was a while ago, but I can still see its effects. He's always tired, he's super skinny, and he has trouble focusing on more than one thing at a time. The thing that hit me the hardest is the fact that he didn't tell me until he was off it, because he was afraid people would leave him if he asked for help. That's just fucking infuriating that you're more likely to be shunned for asking for help in regards to addiction.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;53006576]Ok, then let things continue as usual. [/QUOTE] I don't think anybody is saying that things shouldn't change. I think your comment of "Then maybe our patients should actually grow a pain tolerance" is incredibly asinine and doesn't sound like something someone in the medical profession should be saying. If you actually gave a shit about your patients you wouldn't just ask them to pull up their boot straps and deal with it. Pain is subjective and is different from person to person.

Don't ever do drugs kids. My stepdad was a pretty successful doctor. He worked as a consultant for WebMD and got laid off. He started to write himself prescriptions and blew through all his severance pay and my mom divorced him. Last I heard, he was a broke drug addict living in Connecticut and had his medical license taken away for writing himself prescriptions

[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;53006580]I don't think anybody is saying that things shouldn't change. I think your comment of "Then maybe our patients should actually grow a pain tolerance" is incredibly asinine and doesn't sound like something someone in the medical profession should be saying. If you actually gave a shit about your patients you wouldn't just ask them to pull up their boot straps and deal with it. Pain is subjective and is different from person to person.[/QUOTE] I'm a medical student, and to a certain degree he's completely correct. The US and Canada are the two countries in the world prescribing the most opioids. Denmark is the third, but prescribes only half as much. Some of that is probably fueled by opioid addictions, but it still shows an overreliance on opioids - and perhaps a tendency to react strongly to any and all pain, where it might be more prudent to rely on less addictive (but also less strong) painkillers, and accept more pain in patients. This is all off the top of my head, so yeah, take it with a grain of salt, but obviously different countries are handling pain differently, and not all of them prescribe so many opioids.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;53006691]I'm a medical student, and to a certain degree he's completely correct. The US and Canada are the two countries in the world prescribing the most opioids. Denmark is the third, but prescribes only half as much. Some of that is probably fueled by opioid addictions, but it still shows an overreliance on opioids - and perhaps a tendency to react strongly to any and all pain, where it might be more prudent to rely on less addictive (but also less strong) painkillers, and accept more pain in patients. This is all off the top of my head, so yeah, take it with a grain of salt, but obviously different countries are handling pain differently, and not all of them prescribe so many opioids.[/QUOTE] I have no connection to the medical industry, but I've been around the world a bit, and from what I've seen it's not just painkillers- doctors in the US in general seem much more willing to give their patients whatever they ask for. I've been reading lately about how we've been contributing to antibiotic resistance with benign, normal colds and infections being treated with antibiotics even when the cause is most likely viral. The doctors [i]know[/i] that antibiotics probably won't do anything to help, but patients expect to be given antibiotics, ask for them, and are given them. That's not even starting on how many dependency-forming drugs are given out without a plan for ceasing their use. Not just addictive medications like opioids, but also things like PPIs where the rebound effects can be severe and long-term use has side effects as well. We're severely overmedicated and it's costing us all.

My neighbor's daughter died from a heroin overdose I think a couple of months before I moved here. Pretty sure she was only 18.