DrugBuyers.Com: Am I a vicodone addict?

This raises such an interesting point about how we see pain and medicine in the US ad 2004.

Do I want the medication to be pain free all the time?
So if the answer is yes, then you must be an addict.
This is the answer to most people. But it is not the answer to all people. Some people are in more pain, and not everyone can afford the luxury of going between doses and putting up with more pain.

It is a shame, that we have come so far in the field of technology and modern medicine, and on the whole we still want to withhold medicine from people because if they have more than one tab at a time some of us see that person as an addict.

It is a Best if kept off the board shame that we have come so far in our development of personal freedom in the past century, and yet we still want to make sure people cannot have all the medicine they need.

And it is a Best if kept off the board shame that if you want medicine in order to feel pain-free, when you can be half pain-free with the medicine you need, you are considered to be an addict, a scourge, a low-life.

It is a nauseating shame that this freedom to have a choice in the level of your own medication is not yours, but rather is determined by how pain-free some zealot with a white coat feels you're allowed to be.

It is so easy to label people addicts. It is usually done when we have a beef with them. Addicts are generally seen as a non-productive drain on society, but it ain't necessarily so.

Addicts are not bad, they are not evil people. And just because you want medicine for pain, doesn't even make you an addict anyway.

Many addicts want to medicate a pain that is not necessarily physical in nature (although a physical pain could be present also, and may even lie at the root of the addiction problem).

It is only since roughly 1960 that many opiates have become taboo, practically overnight. Do not for a moment think that that is due to a sudden influx of better medicines. It was the result of
a) a development in thinking that became more Puritan in nature, which stressed that suffering builds character, and it's a sin to enjoy yourself

b) new developments in the pharmaceutical industry, both on the frontier of drug development which ushered in the existence of safer, less harsh, less controversial drugs, not necessarily better or more efficacious. These were

1) a type of compound known as benzodiazepines, replacing many minor and major tranquilisers, as well as traditional sedatives and existing hypnotics, AND some opiates

2) Antidepressants, most notably Tri-Cyclic Antidepressants, on the heels of MAOIs (drugs that were Antidepressant in effect, but also stimulant, and in some ways even (that VILE EVIL) euphoric. MAOIs were around roughly ten years before the TCAs

In a way, the marketing of depression and antidepressants was a brilliant, lucrative ploy, that in one way was like the Emperor's New Clothes, yet in another, brought in billions for the up-and-coming mega-pharmaceuticals.

The effect of this marketing revolution was that millions of heretofore effective prescriptions went out the window, because suddenly they were deemed too unsafe, addictive, controversial, or too euphoric, and for some reason in a Purtitan society we cannot have 'too euphoric' and 'too happy.'

As we progress, we want more safety and less responsibility for our own actions. In frenzied attempts to comply, mega-pharmaceuticals, teaming with advertising geniuses, have been able to make millions feel better through the power of suggestion, even though, with all that safety comes no extra efficacy.

Since about 1960, many effective medications have been banished to the realm of the fantastic, and patients are given very restricted choices in medicine. In fact, doctors are given almost no choices, and the resourceful pharmaceuticals know how to play the head-games, with their luncheons, their corporate gifts, trips and presentations, as well as good old-fashioned blackmail, pressure and questionable practices.

And it is since then that we are being told we can't have what we need, and we certainly can't have what we want. Unless of course it's Paxil, Vioxx, Viagra and Neurontin that we want, because in that case, doctors are more than willing to give you all the samples you want. But extra Percocet for your back because you can't walk to the kitchen without falling to your knees, well that's in the realm of wanting drugs that make you feel good, and if you can't stand to suffer that, then you must be a blight on society.

Based on just what the original poster said here: I still refuse to label you an addict because I think you simply want drugs. For all I know, you may be undermedicated for pain. Not farfetched these days.

Freedom from judgement should be an amendment to the Constitution.