DrugBuyers.Com: Flip side of the coin.....Accidental Dependence

I KNOW I may tick off a few people with this post. I guess I am a glutton or something. Honestly, I don't know why I feel compelled to let my fingers keep on typing!
But I do....I want to start with how/why I felt this needed exploring.
I was browsing through some old posts and found one, "My doc made me a drug addict".
This article ticked off a lot of people. I began to respond to it, but decided against doing so as the thread was a year old, and referenced an article in a magazine, obviously we can't go to the local supermarket and pick up the magazine and read the article.

But I wanted to comment on the flip side:

My Hubby suffers kidney stones. I don't mean he passes a stone once or twice a year. He is loaded with them and has had 3 lithotripsies(sp?) since September 2003, and is still passing stones pretty much weekly.

Back around the end of August/Early September he started seeing a new Urologist. He had just gotten medical insurance and was searching for someone to help prevent the stones. And prevent the trips to the ER for Toradol and Morphine shots.
Anyway, this Urologist starts out by telling Hubby he has never found a patient he couldn't cure of kidney stones and hands him a script for 40# 10/500 Lortabs(no refills) take 1-2 every 3-4 hours, along with Toradol.
I didn't think too much of it, sure it would be a 'short term' remedy and I did see the excruciating pain that hubby was often in.
Well 3 lithotripsies were done over the next couple months, and all through this, Doc kept giving him the same scripts. Keep in mind each script had no refill, so Doc was writing one out each time(or calling it in). My husband pretty much had weekly appts. with the urlologist for tests, x-rays and what not. Hubby drives as part of his job, so he took much less during the day than at night and on weekends, but was still going through at least 40-50 of 10/500's a week.
After about 6 weeks of this I got concerned. When I approached my husband about it, warning him about the addictive nature of hydros, the amount he was taking, etc, etc, he got defensive, basically it was the 'I'm still in pain even taking these...what do you expect' type of argument. It was a no win situation, becuase we both were right. My concerns were he was thrown into 15-20 mg doses every few hours when he wasn't working(per the script instructions), and he 5-10mg doses ever 4-5 hours other times.
Okay, so one day in I think Late January to early February, hubby passes a whopper of a stone the day before a scheduled 4th lithotripsy. After some X-rays, it became apparent that the just 'passed' stone had been stuck in his ureter for all these months and was the main cause of the pain. (How the urlogist missed it on the other litho's is beyond me and off subject...)
Hubby was thrilled he was suddenly pain free after 5-6 months of just about constant pain.

Boy was he in for a shocker when he started feeling crappier and crappier and crappier! (No, I didn't say 'I told you so')
I talked to him about tapering, the Thompson(Thomas?) recipe, basically tried to be supportive and helpful. I Felt the best step would be to call Doc and be absoulutely truthful and tell Doc he needed meds to taper with as he was suffering W/D. Hubby refused adamantly. So I suggested calling Doc and asking for meds for pain just like he had been getting. Nope to that too.
I think he had about 5# 10's left. Basically he just suffered and would take 1/2 or less of one when he was really hurting badly. It took about 3 weeks for him to get pretty much back to feeling well.

Well, after about a month off the hydro he began passing another stone. Fearing the awful W/D he tried to pass it without pain meds. He went about 3 or 4 days in pain and finally he gave in on a Friday afternoon; but he was a couple hours away from home, He asked me to call his Doc to get a script, to help pass the stone. I left the message for the Doctor, and Doctor called me back.

Doc started out by asking if I was concerned with my husband's 'drug use' . Those were his words.
I answered that I HAD been(past tense) but after seeing him go through the withdrawals, I saw that there was a definite dependence, but not addiction. The Doc lectured on, and on about addiction and addicts will do anything to get the drugs, etc, and did not seem to take one thing I said into consideration or even hear one thing I said, after he had asked my opinion. I tried to tell this Doctor that my husband had spent the last few days in severe pain but was trying hard to avoid using the hydro due to fear of the W/D again. He at first refused the script. I talked the Doc into writing a 10 count of 7.5's to get my husband through the weekend. This same Doctor up until only a few weeks earlier had been giving my husband hydros like candy and to my knowledge without much in the way of warnings. My husband has not been back to see this doctor, he is still passing stones, and has not taken any hydro in 5-6 weeks.
I am researching getting him tylenol #3 or possibly even a consult with NWW, for future stones.

I am sorry to get so long winded here, but I was/am still thoroughly ticked off! This Doctor should have been monitoring the prescriptions he was writing earlier.

He should have talked to my husband about the amount of hydro he was taking and the risks. Okay, and I concede it may not have been possible to avoid dependence in this and many other cases, however, then the Urologist should have been willing to work with my husband to taper the hydros. Instead of basically calling him a drug addict. I was/still am offended by this.
Yes, the pill bottles are have warnings. But generally speaking, I really don't think that most of us believe that by taking medication as prescribed it will lead to dependence, or, what someone unfamiliar with actually living with chronic and or long term pain and pain meds would call 'addiction'.
I also believe that this happens more frequently than we would like to think, that a Doc suddenly says, "Oh Best if kept off the board I have written X amount of scripts for X".

Now, I only wanted to explore this because I am on the other side of the coin, where I have a hard time getting adequate pain medications, and think it is ironic that unsuspecting people get sucked into pain med dependence, while others of us can't get a sypmathetic Doc to just write us an adequate supply!

If you've made it this far, thanks for lending your ear/eyes...mind...I dunno!

B~

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Cheers,
B~