Every so often, the focus will shift in medicine from one extreme to another, and we can only wonder why. For instance, several decades ago, doctors were told they weren’t doing enough to manage their patients’ pain.
So prescriptions for highly addictive pain medications became easier to get and those with chronic diseases found relief, at least for awhile, through drugs that cured nothing but seemed to ease suffering.
Pharmacists were told to be sure patients understood the dangers of opiod use but the message was either downplayed or simply not conveyed. Reactions varied but many with conditions that caused achy joints, sore backs and the like noticed it took more pills over time to obtain relief. If doctors balked at upping the dosage, it was easy to get new prescriptions from other providers. And because government-issued guidelines stressed pain management, the deceptions were rarely noticed.
Recently, the pendulum has begun to swing the other way. Emergency room medics found they were treating many more overdoses and coroners discovered more suicides in patients who had not been diagnosed with severe depression.
The startling statistics show 24,650 deadly overdoses in 2014 — the highest number of such deaths ever recorded in this country. Opiod medications such as Vicodin and Percocet were often to blame. Then investigators found that use of heroin (also an opiod) had risen precipitously in areas where use of that drug had previously been insignificant.
Turns out that heroin is much cheaper to get from drug pushers than prescription drugs from the local pharmacy. And where do teenagers get such drugs? Often from their parents’ medicine cabinets. Vicodin, once used primarily by oral surgeons, has become the recreational drug of choice in many cities across the nation.
Thanks to investigation by a high-ranking U.S. Senator, links were discovered between the pharmaceutical companies that make such drugs and the government panels meant to oversee them.
According to Associated Press health writer Matthew Perrone, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) discovered links between panelists who criticized government advisers calling for reductions in prescriptions for painkillers and the pharmaceutical companies that make them.
Almost one third of panelists on the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee had apparent financial ties to the makers of OxyContin and other opiods, Wyden found. Late last year, several committee members fought a federal recommendation that doctors reduce prescribing opiods for chronic pain. The draft guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are intended to curb deadly overdoses tied to such drugs.
Of course, Big Pharma is fighting back to preserve the previous status quo, promoting wider use of the deadly drugs.
An organization known as the U.S. Pain Foundation and another nonprofit, the American Chronic Pain Association, receive significant funding from drugmakers, including Pfizer Inc., AstraZenica, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Abbvie, according to the Associated Press story.
With that kind of pressure from drug producers, it’s time patients began looking out for themselves. When a healthcare provider offers to prescribe potent painkillers, try asking for something more benign. Over-the-counter remedies are often as effective in mitigating pain as opiods — sometimes more so. And other therapies, such as meditation or just the distraction of music, have been proven to work as well.
Because I’ve experienced adverse reactions to almost all prescription medications, I’ve learned to rely on homeopathic remedies, acupuncture and other alternative therapies. My biggest trouble is convincing healthcare providers that I don’t want or need heavy-duty drugs.
It’s worth remembering that drugmakers lobbied Congress to increase investments in treating and researching pain and to create the advisory panel, which in 2010 was rolled into the Affordable Care Act.
The pendulum is swinging back to a time when addictive pain relievers were prescribed only as a last resort. With any luck at all, drugmakers pushing their overpriced products may become a thing of the past.