As with many people my age, I have a lot of pain. Some of it is self-inflicted, other pain is from injuries over the years.
My knees hurt because of the years of doing parades with the Seafair Pirates. A word to younger pirates out there, do not run full tilt down an asphalt street in pirate boots more than 20 times a year. It will eventually kill you knees.
Right now, my left elbow is in excruciating pain. It is self-inflicted. I am told it is tennis elbow, though I don’t play tennis. I do, however, carry around a large tankard that can hold about a 1 1/3 bottles of wine in it. I think the weight of carrying it around in Key West for hours on end gave me the elbow problem. I call the condition “tankarditis.”
And then there’s my lower back. I have horrible, debilitating pain down there that comes and goes. It’s the result of two back to back (pardon the pun) injuries I had while working as a mail clerk at Associated Grocers.
The injury occurred from carrying 50 to 70 pound mail bags every day. Oddly, I only injured my back when they taught us proper lifting techniques. I had been lifting big console TVs since I was 12 and not once did I screw up my back.
But I did it twice at work. This was back in the days when the company would send you to their doctor, not yours. He would confirm that you had an injury and then dose you up with lots of evil drugs so you were pain free and happy. It was hoped that in your euphoric and slightly hallucinatory state that you would forget about suing them and trying to get worker’s comp.
The back has never been the same. At times, I get really bad muscle spasms that shoot up my back to my shoulders. It can be a very painful life.
So, you ask: “Why don’t I see a doctor and get something for it?”
As my friends know, I don’t like doctors much. But more important, I don’t like what these happy pills do to me. I don’t like feeling out of control. Even when a doctor prescribes these gee-whiz feel nothing pills, I don’t take them. The bottles of Percocet and Vicodin just stack up like cord wood in the medicine cabinet. A total waste of my time and my money.
Over the years, I have learned how to increase my threshold of pain. That is how I deal with all this pain – naturally. I let my mind do all the work. Yes, at times it does a pretty shitty job at it. But for the most part, it’s mind over matter.
But the drug companies don’t like people like me. So they continue to find new ways to hook people on painkillers. As if we didn’t have enough whacked out drugs on the market, those money hungry pharmaceutical companies have whipped up a new painkiller that is 10 times stronger than Vicodin. I can just hear the hand wringing going on in the pain management centers around the country – a new drug to get people addicted to.
I’m not alone in this belief. Experts are warning that Zogenix and Zohydro, two of the four super drugs being prepared, are going to make OxyContin seem like you’re taking those candy pills they used to put in toy doctor kits. These babies contain a pure version of hydrocodone, yes, that highly addictive painkiller that in its mixed with acetominophen form, can go for up to $80 per pill on the street.
And the pharmacy companies are jumping up and down with glee, as are the pill mill docs. Why? It’s the perfect business model for them.
Here’s how it all works. If you get strung out on opiates you will want to avoid withdrawals at all costs as they cause cramping, diarrhea, muddled thinking, vomiting and nausea. As a bonus round, the only way to keep them working is to take increasingly higher doses.
Now you’ve got a person who is going to use your product for life. They don’t want to go through withdrawals, so they faithfully show up to every appointment the doctor makes, just so the can get their prescription. I didn’t make this scenario up by the way, Andrew Kolodny put it forth. He’s president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing.
The best part of the new drug is it can’t be renewed automatically. While Vicodin can be refilled up to five times with just one visit to the pill mill doc, this new wonder drug can only be filled once. That means more visits to the doctor which means more cash in his pocket, not yours.
One has to marvel at our capitalistic world, one where the almighty dollar is far more important than the health of a nation.
Oh, I shouldn’t blame this on the capitalistic world, by the way. It’s not a worldwide problem. Americans seem to be the only big babies in the world. While others in faraway countries arguably suffer from far worse healthcare and far more pain due to the hard lives they live, American’s consume 99% of the world’s hydrocodone and 83% of the supply of oxycodone.
I guess this is because we can afford the luxury of not feeling any pain in our lives, or feeling anything really. Small wonder why we’re slipping into a coma as a country – we’re all happily strung out on addictive pain drugs.
Me? I’ll continue to live a drug-free existence. I will just man up and make do with some aspirin, a heating pad and a couple glasses of wine. The pharmaceutical companies won’t make a dime off of me with these new whiz-bang money machines. They can pawn them off on those who will believe that taking a magic pill will solve all their problems.
Hey, wasn’t that what the 60’s were about?
Out on the Treasure Coast, wincing in pain as I type this with my tennis, uhh, tankard elbow,
– Robb