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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jul 20, 2017 - 10:12pm PT
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Washington - Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said the overall enforcement operation involved 29 bureau field offices around the country and more than 300 agents.
"The nation is in the midst of a crisis," McCabe said. "Opioid abuse destroys lives."
McCabe said singled out the doctors, pharmacists and nurses as having violated the personal trust of their patients and clients who depended on them for their well-being.
"These people,'' McCabe said, "inflicted a special kind of damage.''
He said investigators found opioid addicts "packed in standing room-only waiting rooms" at doctors' offices waiting for their prescription painkillers.
"Some doctors were writing more prescriptions than entire hospitals," McCabe said.
In one case, a group of six Michigan doctors allegedly operated a scheme to provide patients with unnecessary opioid prescriptions and later billed Medicare for $164 million in false claims. Some of the those prescribed painkillers, authorities said, were resold on the street to addicts.
South Florida produced the largest number of suspects – 77 – who were charged with a combined $141 million in false billings for home health care, mental health services and pharmacy fraud.
Nearly half of those false billings were submitted by the operator of a Florida addiction treatment center who recruited addicts to relocate to south Florida so the operator could bill insurance companies treatment that was never rendered. In return for their cooperation, the addicts were allegedly offered gift cards, airline travel, trips to casinos, strip club outings and drugs.
A total of 32 suspects were charged in Michigan for their alleged roles in money laundering and "drug diversion schemes'' involving about $218 million, according to federal authorities.
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Bruce Morris
Trad climber
Belmont, California
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Jul 21, 2017 - 12:39am PT
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The problem comes from the medical profession treating pain as a disease, rather than as a symptom.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jul 21, 2017 - 08:05am PT
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I'm gonna have a double espresso to better embrace my constant pain.
You think being a curmudgeon comes easily?
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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Jul 21, 2017 - 08:29am PT
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My father, at age 87, fell off a ladder in the garage and landed on his back on the concrete. He had severe brain injury, as well as broken bones and other things and was never going to recover. We, with the help of the doctors, eased his passing with morphine.
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c wilmot
climber
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Jul 21, 2017 - 08:54am PT
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Almost all of the heroin produced in Afghanistan goes to supply Russia and Europe. Very little makes its way to the US.
Plus heroin is yesterday's high- it's all about the fentynyl,w 18,carfentanil etc..
Easily imported from china and increasingly produced in Mexico by the same cartels who cornered the heroin trade as a result of pills becoming too expensive
our involvement in the Afghanistan opioum production has more to do with funding terrorism in places like Syria while convienently profiting off of waging chemical warfare against Russia
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Mike Honcho
Trad climber
Glenwood Springs, CO
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 29, 2017 - 04:46pm PT
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Either you don't understand what you are writing, or as my 12-step friends would say, you don't understand the first step.
Cheap shot, I knew you'd go there. It is the loser response to throw out at someone who's publicly and humbly admitted their shortcomings in life.
Sorry my post and your ears had different intentions and reactions, but you do see you're the only one who took it that direction? Yes, I'm an alcoholic, no, I'm not apart of the epedimic.
Was just asking a question. Sorry I didn't phrase it so you could get it.
Hankster
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Mike Honcho
Trad climber
Glenwood Springs, CO
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 29, 2017 - 05:14pm PT
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Almost all of the heroin produced in Afghanistan goes to supply Russia and Europe. Very little makes its way to the US.
Plus heroin is yesterday's high- it's all about the fentynyl,w 18,carfentanil etc..
Easily imported from china and increasingly produced in Mexico by the same cartels who cornered the heroin trade as a result of pills becoming too expensive
our involvement in the Afghanistan opioum production has more to do with funding terrorism in places like Syria while convienently profiting off of waging chemical warfare against Russia
Almost my exact point in my OP. What does any of this heroin/fentanyl/etc have to do with a legal prescription from your Doctor regarding awful injuries, military jumps, maybe a lifetime of construction and tool belts, bad decisions(yes, guilty)and whatnot?
Fairly tired of the "opioid epedimic" lumping Doctor prescribed meds for people with actual pain in with fentanyly/heroin addicts. Two FULLY different situations, probably 3-4, no clue personally. I just don't like my future health and pain being lumped in with a bunch of junkies in a legal sense.
YES, I hear the idea that "most heroin junkies start off with vicodins" crap, but I'd personally like to think there's a narrative that separate's various people instead of another war on drugs that just throws everybody into the same category..
And no Ken M, you turd, I don't actually want pain meds from anybody. My Wife and I take several International trips a year, that shit's easy to get, ANY shit's easy to get. My question was just a question.
People with chronic pain, and heroin/fentanyl junkies shouldn't be in the same 60 Minutes segment together, certainly shouldn't be lumped into the same DEA categoty together.
Is there really and epedimic?
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kunlun_shan
Mountain climber
SF, CA
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Jul 29, 2017 - 06:56pm PT
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Hey Hank,
I'm originally from small town British Columbia. I never used to hear of people OD'ing where I once lived, but in the last six months of this year there were 13 deaths, and that's with a population of just 60,000. I have an ex gf who is a nurse at the local hospital, and says they treat roughly an overdose a week. Places downtown now have naloxone kits on hand. It's all related to fentanyl, which can come in drugs that one doesn't expect. So kids taking what they think is ecstasy can end up ODing. Apparently there are a lot of people who were/are on pain medication, who keep needing higher doses. Its a huge dilemma for the health system in Canada about what to do. Its hugely expensive for one thing, even just for all the naloxone that's suddenly needed everywhere.
I wish I could tell you that there's no need to worry about your pain medication. I have a sister who died from heroin addiction, and that was before fentanyl came on the scene. I would call what's going on in my home province an "epidemic" from what I hear. The media there are not making this up, and its affecting a lot of ordinary folks from all walks of life who are speaking out.
excerpt below from
http://www.theprovince.com/health/opioids+cause+dependence+addiction+some/13337443/story.html
Just why do opioids — painkillers that run the gamut from codeine and morphine to oxycodone and the fentanyl patch — lead to dependence, or in other cases become so stubbornly addictive?
First, let's look at how they work.
When ingested, the drugs bind to opioid receptors on the surface of cells, primarily in the central and peripheral nervous system — much like keys fitting into a lock — and block the transmission of pain messages to the brain.
But opioids also work on multiple systems in the body, including the one that controls emotions, giving rise to feelings of pleasure, relaxation and often euphoria.
What's insidious about the medications is that they create physical dependence: over even a short period of time, patients build up a tolerance and need increasingly higher doses to achieve the desired effects, says Dr. David Juurlink, head of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
"Let's say I put you on opioids for a week or two and you suddenly stop them," he says. "You would feel very unwell. The symptoms vary from person to person, but they include pain — generalized pain, pain in the abdomen, pain in the legs.
"When you resume the drug, you feel better. And so you can see how a patient would construe that as evidence of effectiveness and even ongoing need for the drug, even after the pain-relieving effects have waned with time."
While short-term use of opioids can be a godsend for people with acute pain related to cancer, accidental injury or following surgery, many doctors now realize the narcotics aren't really beneficial for long-term treatment of chronic conditions such as arthritis, nerve damage or back pain.
"In fact, they cause pain," says Dr. Mark Ujjainwalla, co-founder and medical director of the opioid addiction clinic Recovery Ottawa. "So you get this hyperesthesia thing," he says. "It's actually a paradox. So the more opioids you get, the more painful everything is."
Physical dependence is pretty well a given for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have been prescribed an opioid, most of them for chronic pain.......
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Jul 29, 2017 - 07:45pm PT
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Physical dependence is pretty well a given for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have been prescribed an opioid, most of them for chronic pain.......
Not 100% true. I don't know whether the percentage of people who have been prescribed an opiod and wind up addicted is 95%, 75%, or 5%.
Yes, some do become addicted. But some don't. I've woken up in the recovery room after a trip to the ER more than once, and been given various opiods to help me deal with the pain. And while I have greedily taken as much as I could while the pain was there, I never felt the need to continue.
Which, I think, is pretty much in line with what Hank was saying in the OP.
That is not to dis people who do get addicted. I have no idea why I (or Hank) can leave the comfort of the morphine drip, or the jar of vicodins, and carry on as normal while others can not. Genetics? I don't know.
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Jul 29, 2017 - 08:10pm PT
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The quote was about chronic, long term, pain, not the relatively short term pain from an event such as an accident.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 29, 2017 - 08:26pm PT
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When the living entity enters the material world and its associated material body it becomes the house of pain ......
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Jul 29, 2017 - 11:42pm PT
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Is that a Sears Honcho...?
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Caveman
climber
Cumberland Plateau
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Jul 30, 2017 - 09:23am PT
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A very effective pain killer can be made with tincture of Solanum Carolinense (horse nettle). You must know ratios and what parts are best. The entire plant is toxic if used incorrectly.
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c wilmot
climber
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Jul 30, 2017 - 09:34am PT
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Is there really and epedimic?
Yes. It's quite obvious. has been for years
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